The Democratic Party is repeating MBC’s lose-lose struggle

Keum Tae-sup

The author is a former lawmaker and prosecutor. 

During the Park Geun-hye administration, I occasionally went hiking and shared meals with former employees of MBC, one of South Korea’s largest television broadcasters. Although MBC is formally a private company, its ownership structure and the influence exerted by successive governments have long made it a focal point of political battles over media independence. The people I met had worked in news and documentary production but were disciplined after producing reports critical of government policies, including the U.S. beef import deal and the Four Rivers project.

They were sent to the MBC Academy for retraining. The curriculum for broadcasters with more than a decade of experience included brunch-making classes and yoga lessons. Some were assigned to manage skating rinks. The message was unmistakable: They were being humiliated and pressured to leave.

Many people who valued press freedom and broadcasting independence supported them, but there seemed to be little hope. At the time, few imagined that President Park would be impeached, and conservative rule appeared likely to continue for years. The prospect of returning to production departments was remote.

They tried to remain composed, but I still remember the bleak feeling of walking mountain trails alongside people in their mid-40s whose careers had effectively been destroyed.

Then came an abrupt reversal. Park’s impeachment led to a change in government, and several of those who had been dismissed eventually became MBC presidents. Many believed the broadcaster would regain its independence and return to normal. At the very least, they expected an end to humiliating personnel decisions and politically motivated dismissals.

That is not what happened.

After the new management took office, 19 employees were fired in the name of rooting out “deep-rooted evils.” Of the 88 reporters who had refused to join a strike, 82 were reassigned. Correspondents appointed under the previous president were recalled before completing their terms.

Years later, the Seoul High Court ruled that MBC’s Normalization Committee had violated labor law by compelling employees to attend hearings and answer questions against their will, while threatening noncompliant staff with suspension and reassignment to the committee’s office.

I have no intention of disparaging those who suffered during that difficult period. There were undoubtedly circumstances outsiders could not fully understand. I have also heard that the anger of those who had been mistreated was simply too deep to contain.

Yet the eye for an eye response transformed what had begun as journalists’ struggle to defend freedom of expression into a power struggle over control of a broadcasting company. MBC employees learned that entire groups could be purged whenever political circumstances changed.

When livelihoods and careers are at stake, people become desperate. Before considering what is right or wrong, they feel compelled to join the winning side. Newly-hired employees must have felt this pressure even more acutely.

The actions of MBC’s new leadership, combined with the successive Moon Jae-in administration’s failure to fulfill its pledge to prevent public broadcasters from falling under the influence of any particular party, shattered hopes that media independence could one day be secured regardless of who held power. It became difficult not to wonder what all the sacrifices and struggles had ultimately been for.

That same sense of futility hangs over the Democratic Party’s internal conflict.

Ahead of the party convention, pro-Lee Jae Myung lawmakers backing Kim Min-seok and Song Young-gil have clashed fiercely with those supporting Jung Chung-rae. Yet it is remarkably unclear what the dispute is actually about or what substantive policy differences separate the two camps.

Consider the controversy over prosecutors’ supplementary investigative authority. The real debate should center on whether stripping prosecutors of that power would advance prosecutorial reform and, more fundamentally, how it would affect ordinary citizens who become victims or suspects in criminal proceedings.

Such a discussion is nowhere to be found.

Months of deliberations by an advisory committee on prosecutorial reform under the Prime Minister’s Office were discarded overnight in the face of pressure from highly mobilized party members.

The reason the Democratic Party has reached this point is simple. The conflict is not really about ideology or policy. It is, above all, a power struggle over nominations for the next parliamentary election.

When Lee Jae Myung lost the party’s presidential primary to Moon Jae-in, he was governor of Gyeonggi, the province bordering North Korea more than any other. Yet he was excluded from inter-Korean summits.

Conversely, when Lee led the party into the general election as chairman, many lawmakers associated with Moon’s faction were denied nominations in what critics called the “mass death of non-Lee figures.”

This history explains why tensions within the Democratic Party are running so high. It is a contest in which defeat carries existential consequences.

Just as the MBC saga left behind a sense of disillusionment, the Democratic Party’s internal conflict will ultimately leave the public feeling equally deflated. The stakes, however, are far greater than the fate of a single broadcaster.

An intense power struggle within the ruling party will inevitably deepen political divisions in an already polarized society.

The Democratic Party is now engaged in a fight in which everyone stands to lose.