The Choi Soon-sil scandal is hurling South Korea into unknown political territory.
With the presidency of Park Geun-hye crippled to an extent that some describe it as having fallen into “a vegetative state,” political parties are trying to erect a new Cabinet headed by a powerful prime minister.
There is no consensus yet on some important details, but the basic idea is to have a prime minister run the executive branch, as in a parliamentary system. The embattled president would then take a backseat in management of domestic affairs for the remaining 16 months of her term.
This is an emergency fix, really, to stop the leadership crisis from deepening and incurring further damage on the nation.
The Constitution clearly states that South Korea’s democracy takes the form of a presidential system where a directly elected president serves as head of government, head of state and commander in chief of the armed forces. The role of the non-elected prime minister, it says, is to assist the president in his or her duties and take full control only when the president becomes incapacitated. If a president has done something terribly wrong and should be stripped of his or her extensive powers, the Constitution says this should be done via impeachment.
To be sure, this is no time for South Korea to stumble upon political unrest caused by a divisive attempt to unseat the scandal-hit president.
The economy is noticeably slowing with its main locomotive -- exports -- quickly losing steam, and our wacky, communist neighbor north of the border is racing toward nuclear armament.
In the US, the surprise victory of Donald Trump in the presidential race casts a cloud over Korea’s military pact with its No. 1 ally as well as the 4-year-old bilateral free trade pact.
Yet, the latest scandal, with its shocking story and damaging effect on public confidence in our democracy, requires more than just emergency patch-ups.
This should lead to soul-searching on our established systems, or the flaws thereof, that allowed Park’s very selective and exclusive inner circle to continue meddling in state affairs unchecked for years.
A 2013 anecdote seems to capture how wretched things have been under Park for the past four years.
In April that year, about a month after Park was sworn in, an equestrian competition in Sangju, North Gyeongsang Province, ended with Chung Yoo-ra, the daughter of Park’s friend of 40 years Choi Soon-sil, in second place. Chung protested the results and Sangju police launched a full-fledged investigation into the judges. President Park ordered a probe by the Culture Ministry.
Several months later, two Culture Ministry officials submitted a report detailing misconduct on both sides -- Chung’s family and their opponents -- in horse-riding circles. In October 2013, Park told the culture minister the ministry officials -- singling them out by name -- were “bad people.” The two were demoted.
Three years later, Park came across the name of one of the two and asked, “Is this person still working?” The two, despite a law protecting their status as public servants from dismissal without cause, left officialdom.
Aside from sensational elements like malfeasance inside the much-veiled inner workings of Cheong Wa Dae, a cult religion and the juicy story of Choi -- which even involves a soured relationship with a former gigolo -- this scandal has undermined the people’s confidence in the way this country is governed. People sarcastically say Korea is a country where Choi’s dreams come true.
Korea’s democracy has suffered not just from Park, Choi or their now infamous associates who wielded undue influence on state projects for their own personal gains.
Our own neglect has also played a part.
Looking back, there were plenty of signs that should have had us questioning Park’s qualifications as a democratic leader.
One of them is Park’s aversion to face-to-face communications with Cabinet members and even her senior secretaries. There have been widespread complaints even in the conservative ruling camp that the intensively private leader was only approachable by three of her oldest serving aides, dubbed “the doorknob trio.”
Culture Minister Cho Yun-seon recently revealed that while serving Park as senior secretary for political affairs for nearly a year until May 2015, she had never met the president in a one-on-one setting.
There is also the much-talked-about mystery of Park’s “seven missing hours” on April 16, 2014, when a ferry, carrying high school students on a field trip to the southern island of Jejudo, sank with over 300 trapped inside.
Park showed up at the disaster control center seven hours after the incident and asked, “Why is it hard to find those students? I heard they all had life vests on.” The Sewol ferry’s slow sinking in the morning had been broadcast live on TV and the footage was played over and over all day. Cheong Wa Dae explains that Park received written reports on the incident 18 times in total, but was never briefed by anyone in person. Even the presidential chief of staff wasn’t aware of her exact whereabouts.
Park, in her nationally televised emotional mea culpa Friday, apologized for “dropping her guard with Choi.”
Well, the media, the legislature and the voters, too, dropped our guard with Park and the highest office she holds.
It has been only three decades ago that South Korea put an end to a long and bloody era of authoritarian rule and started electing its leader in a free and direct poll. It is saddening to think that Park, daughter of military strongman Park Chung-hee, became the president on 51 percent of votes in a democratized Korea and messed it up so spectacularly.
A lesson from this humiliating scandal: Korea's democracy is young and fragile and we need a leader who is, above all, devoted to safeguarding it.
By Lee Sun-young
Lee Sun-young is the national desk editor of The Korea Herald. She can be reached at milaya@heraldcorp.com – Ed.
