[Chon Shi-yong] Mayor Park preparing for flight

Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon is a strong potential presidential candidate for the liberal camp, but he has neither confirmed nor denied his presidential ambitions.

The mayor maintained this position during a meeting with senior journalists Thursday. He skillfully dodged questions about when he would throw his hat into the ring and whether he will serve out his term that is set to last more than two more years.

At one point, he quipped that he had been the mayor of Seoul for nearly five years and that he would not be so easily duped into answering sensitive questions.

Yet, Park -- who was first elected in 2011 in a by-election and reelected in 2014 for a new four-term term -- opened the meeting by commenting -- jokingly -- that come December this year, he will be the longest-serving mayor of Seoul in history, including the period of the Yi Dynasty.

Some took the comment as indicating that he would quit after beating the record and run for the nomination of the main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea early next year. Again, he only said that it was important for him to do his job as mayor.

He did explain major policy issues involving his metropolitan government – like the controversial plan to provide young unemployed people with a monthly stipend and the recent tragic death of a 19-year-old part-time worker who was crushed to death while carrying out repairs at a subway station.

But it was apparent that Park – a former lawyer who gained public fame through civic activism – wanted to put the day’s discourse beyond the municipal level.

The mayor said the subway incident – which renewed public attention to the plight of youths who lacked good working conditions and mismanagement of the city’s subway system – is partly linked to “neoliberalism,” which he said facilitated outsourcing dangerous, low-paid jobs under the pretext of cutting costs.

“We need to take a humane approach, which is the demand of the times,” Park said. He said the municipal government’s decision to cease outsourcing and ban retired city officials from landing jobs at suppliers for the subway corporations is based on the recognition of the importance of respecting human dignity.

Park also defended his plan to provide a monthly stipend of 500,000 won to 3,000 unemployed youths for up to six months, which the central government and conservative critics call a “giveaway” aimed at boosting popularity of the mayor.

“Some still tend to see welfare only as waste,” Park said. He added that the program was devised based on discussions between city officials and hundreds of youths over about two years.   

While issues like the subsidy program affirm that Park is liberal to the bone, the mayor seemed to not want to be branded as a “leftist.” “I think I am center-conservative by European criteria,” he said, adding that he belonged to neither leftists nor rightists but citizens.

Park said Korea was in a dire situation as seen by the decline of the manufacturing industries that buttressed its economy. He took the example of POSCO, for which he served as an outside director for five years. “During those times, there were such big surpluses that they did not know where to spend the money, but it is now in the red.”

The country has not made proper preparations for what to do in the post-high growth era, Park said.

Park, noting that Korea has many conflicts and divisions, needs a new leadership that can pull the country together.

“The present situation is hopeless,” he said, adding that “there should be a middle ground, but everyone is ignoring it.” 

Park said that he was a “pragmatist” and that what’s important for a leader -- be the Seoul mayor or the president -- is what he or she will do: “You too should think more about what should be done (for the country) than who would be the leader.”

It seemed to me that Park wanted to tell us that he at least knows what the next president – to be elected Dec. 20 next year, should be ready to so.

The mayor’s name card carries the image of a spoon-billed sandpiper, a rare species of bird. The line along with it says “it is small, but flies far.” The 90-minute meeting further convinced me and my colleagues that the bird is stretching its wings. It will be in the air soon, but where it will land is still anybody’s guess.

By Chon Shi-yong 

Chon Shi-yong is the chief editorial writer of The Korea Herald. He can be reached at sychon@heraldcorp.com –Ed.