Yoon meets Park, honors father in gesture of conservative unity

President Yoon Suk Yeol met former President Park Geun-hye on Thursday at an event commemorating the anniversary of Park's father's death, in an apparent move to unite a conservative bloc reeling from low support ahead of the general elections in April.

Yoon is the first Korean president to attend the memorial service to honor Park Chung-hee, who was assassinated in 1979 after a dictatorship spanning nearly two decades. The ceremony was held at 11 a.m. at the Seoul National Cemetery, where the former Korean leader is buried, just hours after Yoon returned from a weeklong trip to Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

The commemoration was also attended by conservative People Power Party Chairman Rep. Kim Gi-hyeon, Floor Leader Yun Jae-ok, the party's innovation committee chief John Linton, known as Ihn Yo-han in Korean, Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon and about 2,000 other participants.

Yoon said at the annual event that the "can-do spirit" behind the economic growth that happened under the late Park must be cherished and remembered to weather uncertainties.

"Since my inauguration, I've met 92 heads of state to discuss economic cooperation, and they all admired the rapid economic growth led by Park Chung-hee and expressed their respect for his resolution. I've said, 'You should do a study about Park and fast-paced economic growth will be guaranteed,'" Yoon said in his eulogy to Park.

"Park's 'can-do spirit' inspired our people ... and allowed us to live up to our potential and bind us together."

Before Yoon, formerly a prosecutor, was elected in 2022, he worked with then-special counsel Park Young-soo to look into a political corruption scandal involving former President Park and her longtime friend Choi Seo-won, known at the time as Choi Soon-sil. Revelations from the investigation that Choi took bribes in return for favors triggered a series of massive protests here, which resulted in the ouster of Park in 2017.

Park was given a presidential pardon in December 2021, after she was sentenced to a combined 22 years in jail by the Supreme Court in January 2021 for multiple counts of bribery, coercion and alteration of a conservative party election. Park led the country from 2013 to 2017.

Recently spending most of her time in her place of birth Daegu, Park made her first public appearance in Seoul Thursday since she was pardoned and released from jail. Her first public appearance since being pardoned was at the Donghwasa Buddhist temple on Palgongsan in Daegu, in April this year.

"We are facing various challenges ahead of us, but I believe the government and the people would be able to overcome these challenges," Park said in her eulogy to her father.

"Since the national foundation, Korea has made it through tough times. We've experienced war. We've been through extreme poverty at a time when it was never easy to make ends meet. ... Everyone who came here, my father and I have the same dream, it is to gather strength so our future generation could live in prosperity."

The pair's encounter came 1 1/2 years after Yoon met Park as president-elect in April 2022.

Park said in a media interview in September that she was "relieved to see a conservative candidate (Yoon) win the presidential election" when asked about her stance on the man who probed into scandals surrounding her becoming president.

Thursday's meeting suggests they have left their past differences behind, as the conservative party heads into the general election in April. The ruling party holds 111 out of 298 seats, while the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea occupies a clear majority with 168 seats.

The ruling People Power Party's leader Kim held closed-door talks with Park on Sept. 13 at her residence. Kim told reporters after the meeting that Park "responded positively" when told about Yoon's intention to meet her.

Conservatives are in emergency mode after the People Power Party suffered a crucial defeat in a by-election earlier this month.

The party's loss by 17 percentage points in the by-election for the chief role of Seoul's Gangseo-gu Office on Oct. 11 caused eight nominative officials to step down. On Monday, Linton, a descendant of a US missionary and volunteer during the 1980s democratization movement, was named to lead the party's reform.

The approval rating of the People Power Party hit an all-time low at 32 percent in the second week of October before slightly rebounding last week, according to a poll by Realmeter. Yoon's approval ratings reached 32.5 percent last week, declining for two weeks in a row.

Park is not the only former conservative president making public appearances amid the People Power Party's internal turmoil, and with less than six months to go until the general election.

Another former conservative president, Lee Myung-bak, also made a public appearance recently. Lee, who was pardoned by Yoon in December 2022, presented himself on Wednesday at a walking event in Yeoju, Gyeonggi Province, and said his signature Four Major Rivers Restoration Project should not be exploited with political intention.

Meanwhile, Yoon's office said Thursday that the president would not attend a ceremony to commemorate the victims of the Itaewon crowd crush disaster on Sunday, calling the event "politically motivated."