President Park Geun-hye pledged Wednesday to significantly bolster the government's personnel screening system in order to select the right people for important positions and make sure incidents, like the sexual abuse scandal involving her former spokesman, will not happen again.
"I will try to be more thorough by having the presidential personnel affairs committee vet (candidates) more thoroughly in a multi-faceted manner and making institutional improvements as well," Park said during a meeting with dozens of political editors of newspapers and broadcasters.
Park said that she was "greatly disappointed" when her personnel selections ended with poor results and made her ask herself, "Was he that kind of a person?" -- an apparent reference to her disgraced former spokesman, Yoon Chang-jung.
"There is a saying, 'We can know what it looks like 10 fathoms under water, but we cannot know the human mind, even if is just a single fathom deep,'" Park said. "In the case of spokesman Yoon too, I believe nobody would have thought he would be embroiled in sexual abuse like this."
Park said the government is trying to look for ways to thoroughly improve and strengthen its personnel selection and screening system while building a database of candidates. She also said the government is trying to proactively run the selection and vetting system at all times.
Yoon was fired last week following allegations that he grabbed the buttocks of a young Korean-American woman who was locally hired to assist him as a secretary. He was also accused of exposing himself to the woman when she came to his hotel room.
Despite the firing, he still has remained a government official. But officials said that the presidential office stripped him of the status as well on Wednesday, which means that he was removed from the government's payroll.
Yoon, who returned home in the middle of the presidential trip, has flatly denied the allegations, claiming he only patted her on the waist in a gesture to encourage her to do a better job, and that he was wearing his underpants when she came to his hotel room.
But presidential officials said that Yoon had admitted during an interview with Cheong Wa Dae ethics officers upon his return from the U.S. that he did touch the woman's buttocks and that he was wearing nothing when she dropped in on him in his hotel room.
Park has apologized over the scandal, and pledged to tighten discipline among officials.
"As I said earlier, we should take this case as an opportunity to firm up discipline among not only Cheong Wa Dae, but all government officials," she said. "We will make sure that this kind of incident, which disappoints the people and breaches their trust, should never happen again."
Yoon's immediate superior, senior press secretary Lee Nam-ki, has also offered to resign over the scandal, and Park said Wednesday that she will decide whether to accept Lee's resignation according to her pledge to have all senior secretaries related to the case take responsibility.
The remark strongly suggests that she will accept the resignation.
South Korea has also asked the U.S. for a swift investigation into the case.
"We have asked the U.S. for an investigation and said we hope to get an answer as early as possible. If we get the results, we will take follow-up measures, if necessary, according to them,"
Park said without elaborating what those follow-up measures would be.
The sensational case has completely overshadowed Park's otherwise successful visit to the U.S., where she and Obama agreed to further upgrade the traditional alliance between the two countries while reaffirming that they are firmly united against threats from North Korea.
On Wednesday, Park also said that Seoul and Washington strongly believe that North Korea should never be rewarded for bad behavior and the same old pattern of Pyongyang winning concessions after rattling its sabers must be broken.
She also urged the North to give up its nuclear programs.
"How can nuclear weapons protect North Korea? As I said earlier, the former Soviet Union did not collapse because it was short of nuclear weapons," Park said. "North Korea should wake up from such illusions. It should not rely on nuclear weapons."
Park also said she is ready to provide aid to the North if it chooses the right path.
In recent weeks, North Korea has toned down war rhetoric and begun talking about the possibility of dialogue with Washington after weeks of nuclear strike threats and other menacing bombast against South Korea and the United States.
But in inter-Korean relations, no signs of a breakthrough are in sight as Pyongyang has spurned Seoul's calls for talks about saving the suspended joint industrial complex in its border city of Kaesong from permanent closure.
The factory park has been suspended since early April as North Korea withdrew all of its 53,000 workers for 123 South Korean-run factories there. As Pyongyang barred South Korean supplies from entering the complex, Seoul also withdrew all of its workers from the zone.
On Tuesday, South Korea made yet another proposal to hold talks with North Korea about bringing finished products and raw materials from the complex. But Pyongyang rejected the offer Wednesday, saying any talks should be about resolving "fundamental" problems.
Park said the North would be putting itself further into a corner if it refuses to return the South Korean assets because it will make the world believe that the North is a nation difficult to work with and make investments in.
"North Korea should exercise gentlemanship on issues like this," she said.
Park said China can play a very important role in persuading North Korea to change its course, praising Beijing for participating in adopting a new U.N. resolution on the North and carrying out sanctions against the communist nation.
She said she plans to visit China as early as possible.
On last week's summit with Obama, Park said that the meeting was a very important chance to build trust between the two leaders so that they can work closely together over the next four years. (Yonhap News)
