SEOUL -- Some weeks ago, I attended an academic conference that attempted a critical evaluation of the performance of administration of South Korea President Kim Dae Jung three years after its inception. I sat on a panel with probably the most prominent liberal political scientist in South Korea today, Professor Choi Jang Jip. For many years Choi, who teaches at Korea University in Seoul, was a close personal adviser of Kim. After Kim was elected president, Choi was appointed head of the Presidential Commission on Policy and Planning, an influential position in the inner circle of power.
Choi's excursion into the political world did not come to a happy end. The scholar turned politician felt the muscle of the conservative establishment. Eventually, attacks against him -- which were backed by an influential media-group -- became so fierce that the president had no option but to sacrifice his adviser on the altar of political harmony.
At the conference, Choi presented a penetrating analysis of the problems and impediments barring Kim from implementing his political reform agenda. According to Choi, the two stumbling blocks that prevent the liberal transformation of South Korea's political system are hyper-centralization and the ideological schism and the prevailing anticommunist ideology.