About three weeks ago, Channel PNU demanded one favor from me. I hope the article contains my desire for the new government inaugurated on May 10. Although I had enough time to write, I started composing after receiving a manuscript reminder from Channel PNU the day after the deadline. It was hard to begin because of the focus and range of the desires for the new government since Channel PNU is a media of the university community, not ordinary citizens. Above all, Yoon's move, including the formation of the transition committee and cabinet selection, went against my expectations.

The first thing out of step is forming a presidential committee. After starting my new position at PNU, I shifted the focus of comparative research between local politics and local governments rather than central and national governments. So, I am particularly interested in government policies related to balanced national development and decentralization. A special committee for balanced regional development is currently established in the presidential transition committee but is not included in the initial announcement of the transition committee organization. Immediately after the report, the heads of local governments raised the issue one after another before being integrated into the transition committee. I am relieved that the chairman of the special committee is an authority on local autonomy and decentralization and the policymaker of the Roh Moo-Hyun government, which has taken the most drastic decentralization measures in the past. However, I still doubt how serious the new government's key figures are about the crisis of overcrowding and destruction.

The second thing out of step relates to selecting candidates to form a Cabinet. The president-elect said he did not consider the quota system or regional arrangements to form the government as the best experts in the field. In this section, I became concerned that the value of fairness that the new government is putting forward may remain at the level of classical liberalism or that the value orientation of democracy may be too efficient. National unity, which the president-elect who won the election mentions, and balanced regional development discussed above cannot be achieved by a national philosophy aimed only at fairness and efficiency without special consideration.

Since I want the new government's success more than anyone else, I would like Yoon to reflect on the new government's motto of fairness and common sense and tune up a new concept. Impartiality without consideration is cold, so it is difficult to accept it in the people's hearts, and common sense that meets the criteria of whether it is legal or not feels poor. The reforms that marked a watershed in the history of human development were carried out by warm conservatism. Self-censorship and ethics required of such conservatism  had to transcend the limits of the law. It is not ordinary to leave a ministerial candidate in the square to see if he broke the fundamental law as if applying the presumption of innocence, but rather to remind him of a gladiator in Rome's amphitheater. How can a candidate resign himself? Resignation is self-confessed cheating that is hard to prove, and he wants to be a minister so much.

54 years ago, Gregory Henderson characterized Korean politics as a "swirl" in his book. Both power resources and public sentiment express the characteristics of Korean politics in a whirlpool toward Seoul. Henderson may even have predicted the current overcrowding of the human and material metropolitan area decades ago. On reflection, this vortex was caused by different administrations' sizes as a constant of Korean political culture. In some cases, the unaffordable vortex determined the fate of the regime. The new government should manage it rather than drive it with a caretaker government's mindset until two years after its inauguration.

When I was studying in the United States, President Roh Moo-hyun was amid the whirlpool of Korean politics. At that time, the political situation in Korea, encountered on the Internet, was noisy. There was little favor for President Roh Moo-hyun because he was trapped in the frame of a "president with no dignity" created by the media. However, after his death, I returned to Korea to research local autonomy and decentralization, paying homage to the efforts to tear down Seoul-centered vested interests and turn the whirlpool toward the center into a warm breeze toward the provinces. When I hear that my graduating students have succeeded in recruiting local talent for public companies, I expect the new government to blow a warm wind toward the provinces, following President Roh Moo-hyun, whom he respects and misses.

 By Seo Jae-Gwon, Prof. of Political Diplomacy

Translated by Shin Ji-Won