If I had to give one piece of advice to President Park Geun-hye to help her out in the postelection confusion, I would ask the head of state to move her Blue House office down to the staff building and work there until the end of her tenure.
She could use the grandiose main building for receptions with foreign guests and distinguished individuals such as Tuesday’s luncheon with more than 40 media representatives.
Yet, the president should also be advised to reduce her “dialogue sessions” with large numbers of experts and workers from various areas. Many doubt the effectiveness of such stage-managed proceedings, perfunctory situation reports and troubleshooting.
Given the recent election results, everyone speaks of a fresh start and how it should change the president’s style and governance.
Now that voters have shaken up the National Assembly structure, it is up to her to first reshape the mechanism that links the party, Cabinet and Blue House.
President Park played no visible part in the election except that to wear a red suit — the color of the ruling Saenuri Party — when going to the polling booth. But, it was Park Geun-hye’s election in the negative sense, unfortunately. She was the director or main lead in the soap opera that caused so much disenchantment toward the conservative government party.
One significant phenomenon was the splitting of the main opposition party into The Minjoo Party and Ahn Cheol-soo’s People’s Party. The division of a major party prior to an election is not new in the annals of Korean politics. However, one unprecedented occurrence was the extreme dogfight that took place within the ruling party between its two factions.
One side tried to execute the president’s wishes to exclude maverick members from party nomination and to have her loyalists remain in the next Assembly. The other struggled to foil the scheme.
In the unsuccessful attempt to oust Yoo Seong-min — the top critic of the president in Saenuri — all emerged losers, with the president suffering the worst damage. Gone is the legislative majority that she was in dire need of to push her economic and social reform programs.
The people of Daegu — Park’s home turf — not only reelected Yoo but embraced Kim Boo-gyum from the opposition by a big margin.
Most significantly, Park earned an irrevocable image of stubbornness for appearing unable to tolerate open dissent from her own camp.
Rep. Yoo was a top aide to Park before she entered the Blue House. While serving as Saenuri’s floor leader, he had criticized the president’s welfare policy to increase benefits without a tax increase, calling it a fantasy. On the pension fund reform, he had accepted opposition initiatives.
When the nomination battle was heating up in the Saenuri Party, I happened to see a video clip of an Assembly Defense Committee session held shortly after the North’s attacks with boxed mines in the Demilitarized Zone last year. Rep. Yoo was grilling Defense Minister Han Min-koo on the military’s lukewarm response to the North such as resuming loudspeaker broadcasts at selected locations on the front line,
The lawmaker had questioned the defense minister by saying, “You vowed that the military would make the enemy pay ‘severely’ for the attack. Can you say that North Korean soldiers were paying a severe price as they were forced to listen to propaganda broadcasts from the South?”
In this clip, he could well be mistaken for an opposition member cornering a senior official.
President Park must have seen arrogance and demagogy in the man who was trying to build up a leadership image for a big chance in 2018 or afterward.
She did what she could to deal with this betrayal of a former loyalist: Lee Han-koo, head of the party’s nomination committee, was given the role of hatchet man, and Kim Moo-sung, current party chair, refused to press the party seal on the nominees’ list.
In the final days leading to the election, my friends across different political spectra openly expressed their intent to vote for a third party, stemming from the bitterness of watching unproductive bipartisan confrontation and tussles that resembled backstreet bullying. Leadership, unity and integrity were nowhere to be seen.
The outcome was beyond expectation. The nascent People’s Party garnered 38 seats including 13 from the proportional tickets thrown by voters who wanted to punish both the first and second parties.
While the emboldened opposition is hurrying to assert control of the political arena, the bedraggled Saenuri is searching for new stewards. Meanwhile, the diminished president with a 29 percent approval rating acts business as usual with the economic agenda.
Defeat in the parliamentary election does not necessarily mean a lack of confidence in the entire government, but it expedites the alienation of the president from the party, a tradition in the Republic of Korea under the 1987 Constitution, which provides a single five-year presidential term. President Park must have hoped to free herself from this curse, but has rather advanced it because of her interference in party nominations.
The Blue House, built in 1991 during the transitional Roh Tae-woo presidency, is a huge edifice. I have had the honor of visiting its main building a couple of times and each time I thought of the inevitable loneliness of its occupant.
The high ceiling inspires awe as well as discomfort, the bare walls radiate little warmth, and the significant distance between the living quarters and the staff offices — not to mention the pressroom — sufficiently detaches the head of state from the rest of the nation.
Five years in that sort of place would be unbearable if its resident does not make extraordinary efforts to mix with others. Ever since her inauguration in 2013, President Park has kept us wondering how she spends her time, her evenings and weekends in the big house, making us imagine deep solitude.
For many former supporters, sympathy with the president has turned into apathy bordering on resignation. If she continues to remain inside the overly spacious cocoon, it would be unfortunate for her, her party and her beloved nation.
By Kim Myong-sik
Kim Myong-sik is a former editorial writer for The Korea Herald. He can be reached at
kmyongsik@hanmail.net — Ed.
