Each year, Korean university professors vote for a proverb that summarizes or best represents the year that has passed. For this year, the proverb "gyeon-ri-mang-ui"見利忘義 has been chosen. Originally from a text by Zhuangzi, a Chinese philosopher from the 4th century BCE during the Warring States period, the four characters loosely translate to "forgetting what is right when seeing a gain." It means being more interested in how one can benefit from something and forgetting about what is the right thing to do.

This is indeed an apt and accurate description of the current state of politics in Korea. We as a nation and society are confronted with existential crises of the most fundamental kind: from the lowest birthrate in the world to the highest teen suicide rate as well as the highest senior poverty rate, three times the OECD average.

There is a myriad of pressing problems that urgently require political solutions, but it is difficult to find any real discussion on these issues. Instead, domestic politics are mired in bickering, personal power struggles and jockeying for positions, both within and outside political parties, all of which matter very little to the welfare of ordinary people.

The real problem is that the political parties are not working the way they are meant to. Ideally, a political party should be a platform for policies. The voters choose a party based on its policies and the party that gets the most votes wins and gets to implement those policies. The success or failure of the party is then judged in the next election. In Korea, however, a political party is not a........

© The Korea Times