Free Holidays in Hell: In Which Our Intrepid Reporter Travels to the World's Worst Places and Asks, "What's Funny About This" by P. J. O’Rourke

throat-searing kimchi burps and terrible, pants-splitting kimchi
farts.
    I came to the surface of the crowd and went under again like a
toddler in big surf. I was squashed and tumbled. My foot came out
of my shoe. My pocket was picked. Finally, I was expelled from the
mass with one collective shove and kick.
    This is what Koreans are like when they're happy.
    And the Koreans were very happy with their first presidential
election in sixteen years. They voted like the dickens-an 89.2
percent turnout. But I couldn't get any of them to tell me why. What
was this election supposed to be about?
    Practically everybody running for president was named Kim.
There was Kim Dae Jung, the opposition front-runner, Kim Young
Sam, ("Kim: The Sequel"), also the opposition front-runner, and
Kim Jong Pil ("Kim: The Early Years'), the opposition straggler.
Plus there was the non-Kim candidate, Roh Tae Woo (pronounced
"No Tay Ooh" and called "Just Say No" by the foreign press corps).
Roh was handpicked by the military dictatorship that's been running South Korea since 1971.
    Everybody knew Roh was going to win because Kim the DJ
and Kim the Sequel had promised to unite antigovernment opposition behind one candidate, but then they forgot and spent most of
the campaign bickering with each other. And Roh was going to win
anyway because he had the constituency that votes with M-16s.
(When these boys make their voices heard in the marketplace of
ideas, you'd better listen up.) So the election wasn't about winning.
    And the election wasn't about political-party allegiance, either. The distinctively named parties-Peace and Democracy, Democratic Justice, Reunification Democratic, and New Democratic Republican-all fielded candidates. If I were a hard-working
journalist with a keen eye for detail, I'd sift through my notes now
and tell you what Kim belonged to which. But that would be a waste
of everybody's time. A Korean political party exists solely to boost
the fortunes of its founding candidate and has the average life span
of a trout-stream mayfly hatch.

    Campaign promises? Kims 1-2-3 promised to promote freedom of expression, work for reunification of North and South, fight
corruption, improve the country's god-awful human-rights record,
raise living standards, and lower taxes. But then that fascist pig
Roh Tae Woo went out and promised to do the same and lots more of
it. Nobody, Kim or un-Kim, said too much about Korea's near
absence of social-security programs, the $140-a-month minimum
wage, the seventy-two hour work week or the fact that it's illegal to
have an independent labor union. Kim Dae Jung is supposed to be
the big liberal in the bunch. When interviewed by a Canadian
business magazine, the DJ, that feisty champion of the common
man, was quoted as saying, "Of course we want to advocate some
social welfare, but we do not want to be excessive. . . . If trade
unions advocate extreme or radical demands, the law must prohibit
this." So the election wasn't about campaign promises.
    Why was everybody voting so hard? The only answer I could
get from Koreans was "democracy."
    "What's this election all about?" I asked.
    "Democracy," they answered.
    "But what is democracy?" I said.
    "Good."
    "Yes, of course, but why exactly?"
    "Is more democratic that way!"
    Well, this is heartening to those of us who prefer a democratic
system. But I still don't know what they're talking about. "Korea
must have democracy," my Korean friends told me. "Democracy is
very good for Korea." "Korean people want very much democracy."

    I guess democracy is something that if you're going to be
really up-to-date, you just can't do without-like a compact-disc
player. (Actual South Korean experience with democracy, by the
way, consists of one thirteen-month period between the April 1960
overthrow of strongman Syngman Rhee and the May 1961 military
coup by General Park Chung Hee.)
    On election day I cruised Seoul with an old friend