Watching Rep. Park Geun-hye, the presidential candidate of the ruling Saenuri Party, apologize for the excesses of her late father’s oppressive rule during a news conference Monday, most people including her supporters must have thought the act of contrition should have come earlier.

Park certainly went farther than had been largely anticipated in admitting the negative aspects of President Park Chung-hee’s 18-year reign, which ended with his assassination in 1979. She said constitutional values had been damaged and political progress had been delayed by the 1961 military coup which brought her father to power, the imposition of the dictatorial Yushin (revitalizing reform) regime in 1972 and the execution of eight allegedly pro-communist activists in 1975.

She offered her “sincere apology” to the victims of her father’s rule and their family members, promising to set up a national unity commission to heal their pain and wounds.

Park’s remarks represented a sharp departure from her reserved stance on the legacy of her father, who has been both credited with laying the groundwork for the country’s economic rise and criticized for suppressing democracy and human rights. Her unwillingness to get in tune with the prevailing public sentiment critical of the ways her father ruled has eroded her status as leading presidential contender. Over the past weeks, she has seen her approval rating overtaken by those for her two liberal rivals ― Rep. Moon Jae-in of the main opposition Democratic United Party and software mogul Ahn Cheol-soo, running as an independent.

Park’s decision to decouple herself from her father’s negative legacy apparently reflected her sense of crisis that her second and probably last bid for the presidency might be thwarted by her ambiguous stance on past issues. It was a belated but necessary move for the 60-year-old ruling party candidate to make a clear verdict on her father’s merits and mistakes. Difficult for a faithful daughter, it was an inevitable cost she had to pay, if she were to become a national leader in its true sense.

In retrospect, she should have put forward such a remorseful stance at the latest when she was nominated as the ruling party’s candidate on Aug. 20. She has none but herself to blame for the lingering doubts among some people about her sincerity in offering the apology.

It will be another task for Park to prove, through acts, that she meant what she said. But her latest act, as both of her presidential rivals conceded, was nothing to be easily done. It can be meaningful that the longstanding dispute over her father’s legacy between conservative and liberal camps has been finally settled by her remarks. What draws our attention particularly is her statement that it is an unchanging democratic value that “ends cannot justify the means in politics.”

Her act of contrition can be regarded as effectively backing her emphasis that now is the time to look forward instead of dwelling on the past. We hope it will serve to lead the presidential race to focus on the vision for the country’s future and concrete policies to realize it rather than amplifying the dispute over history. There are a pile of issues on the economy, security and political reforms, about which voters now want to hear the candidates’ specific views.