Lee’s chief of staff says he will step down in Dec. after budget bill, FTA passes


Cheong Wa Dae was scrambling to deal with mounting pressure over last week’s defeat in the mayoral by-election, with its chief of staff saying he will quit after the National Assembly passes the Korea-U.S. free trade agreement bill and next year’s budget bill.

The presidential office is planning an organizational shake-up, officials said Monday, as it has often done after losing elections.

Dong-a Ilbo, a local newspaper, reported that Yim Tae-hee said he will leave Cheong Wa Dae after the two pending tasks are completed, following up on news reports that he offered to resign to take responsibility over the electoral setback.

Reformists within the ruling party have been attacking the presidential office, rather than the party’s leadership, as they point to a growing disillusionment with the Lee Myung-bak administration as the main reason for last week’s defeat.

Rep. Wohn Hee-ryong, a member of the Grand National Party’s supreme council, said Monday that pressure for reform will mount against Cheong Wa Dae.

“President Lee is working hard ... but he sometimes sings his own praises and speaks of the people’s demand for reform as if it’s targeted at someone else,” Wohn said in a supreme council meeting.

“And his unilateral and condescending attitude, the yes-man behavior around him are alienating the public and making them lose hope.”

Wohn said the party can no longer afford to be polite and considerate of the president and Cheong Wa Dae, stressing that the people “will not wait” six months ahead of the general elections in April.

Rep. Jeong Tae-keun of the GNP said last Friday that the party must “tear apart and mend” the presidential office, accusing it of “arrogance and a lack of communication.”

It is the second time Yim offered to step down after he quit as a lawmaker to take the job as Lee’s chief-of-staff in July last year. Yim said he was ready to leave anytime after the GNP lost in the April by-elections.

“I believe it was a misrepresentation of words because as the president’s secretaries, we do not decide when we step down,” Lee’s spokesman Park Jeong-ha said.

“(Yim) seems to have stressed that we should do our best on given jobs without clinging on to any positions.”

Yim has pledged not to run next year in Bundang, Gyeonggi Province, where he was elected legislator three times in a row.

Cheong Wa Dae plans an organizational shakeup to improve its public relations functions and the presidential security service.

Officials handling of public relations will be absorbed into the presidential spokesman’s office, and a plan to name a vice spokesperson for foreign press is in consideration ahead of the second Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul in March.

The Presidential Security Service, which led the controversial purchase of a housing lot for the president to use for retirement, is also set to undergo changes under the new chief Eo Cheong-soo. The PSS decision-making process has been criticized as “excessively secretive” as opposition criticism made the president cancel the property purchase made under his son’s name in October.

By Kim So-hyun (sophie@heraldcorp.com)