Flower Power, Soft Power

South Korea is redefining the rules of democracy by rejecting hard economic and military might and adopting aesthetic and humanist principles, including universal human rights in Asia

Satya Sivaraman Gwangju South Korea  

At a solemn function on May 18, in the city of Gwangju, 300 kms from Seoul, Burmese dissident Min Ko Naing was awarded South Korea's highest human rights prize for 2009.

Currently serving a 65-year sentence for opposing his country's repressive military regime, Min Ko Naing, the best known Burmese pro-democracy leader after Aung San Suu Kyi, could not attend and was represented by one of his fellow student activists. "Through the award, we see we are not alone in our fight against the military regime in Burma and my colleagues will be much strengthened by this gesture," said Aung Myo Myint, of the All Burma Federation of Student Unions (ABSFU), an organisation Min Ko Naing had founded way back in 1988.

While the award, welcomed by Burmese activists around the world, was a clear recognition of Min Ko Naing's heroic achievements, it was also another step towards establishing South Korea itself as a beacon of democratic rights in Asia. Tucked in between big powers like China and Japan and facing off bitter rival North Korea, the South Koreans for long were seen as another political pygmy in the pockets of the US in Asia.

This perception is changing thanks to South Korea's rise as one of Asia's most vibrant democracies, its growing cultural hegemony in the region and post-Cold War global transformations making it what analysts are calling a 'soft regional power'. The term 'soft' is meant to show that its power does not come from 'hard' military or economic might but due to the country's good image, democratisation of domestic politics, export of ideas, assertion of humanism and peace, and popularity among the people in the region.

The Gwangju human rights prize, for example, is one such South Korean initiative to make the country's modern day struggles for democracy well known throughout Asia and win goodwill in the region. Administered by the non-profit 'May 18 Memorial Foundation', the prize includes a gold medal, a certificate of achievement and Korean Won 50,000,000.

"It is a privilege for us to select Min Ko Naing for this prize as he represents the spirit of the Gwangju uprising in the extremely repressive Burmese context," said Chanho Kim, Director of the May 18 Foundation.

The prize has been given every year since 1994 in memory of an armed uprising in 1980 by ordinary citizens of Gwangju, a beautiful city in the western part of South Korea, against the then military dictator, Chun Doo-Hwan. Several hundred people died in the military crackdown, an event that many South Koreans believe inspired the country's entire pro-democracy movement.

"The Gwangju uprising and the brutal crackdown changed the course of modern Korean history by robbing the then military rulers of all credibility and making them the object of public anger," says Jung-Kwan Cho, professor of political science at the Chonnam National University in Gwangju.

Despite details of the bloody incident being officially hushed up throughout east and south-east Asia, Gwangju became a byword among democracy activists for popular revolt against the region's repressive regimes.