[Editorial] Pres. Park needs to come clean on the Sewol tragedy

Posted on : 2014-08-15 15:57 KST Modified on : 2014-08-15 15:57 KST
 the day of the Sewol tragedy
the day of the Sewol tragedy

The Blue House has revealed some of President Park Geun-hye’s whereabouts on the day of the Sewol ferry sinking in April. Almost none of the details were anything that wasn’t known before - just more specifics about the times when reports were made. Giving information in dribs and drabs like these doesn’t just fail to answer the questions that are already out there. If anything, it just raises more.

The first problem is the way the information was released. Lawmaker Cho Won-jin, the Saenuri Party’s secretary on the Sewol investigation committee, announced it as a “written response from the Blue House,” and it’s hard to shake the sense that they’re being petty. This is the kind of thing that makes people wonder if there’s something we’re not being told. Also, when the party has its committee secretary - someone who should be taking the lead in the investigation - acting as a self-appointed spokesman for the Blue House, it’s basically admitting that it’s doing the executive’s bidding.

President Park reportedly received a total of 21 written and cable reports on the day of the disaster, with a total of 18 reports in the seven hours before her visit to the Central Disaster Headquarters. Yet she never once received a face-to-face report, or even held a meeting. All she did was issue two orders that came straight from the protocol playbook. Try as we might, we can’t fathom how she could have given no kind of order at all even after the reports of 190 additional rescued passengers turned out to be false.

The Blue House is still keeping very quiet about what measures the President took after she received the reports. We know nothing about whom she met with, what they talked about, what conclusions she reached about the situation, or what instructions she gave. We have no access to information about the sources of her reports, or whether she actually read them. When the President takes no action despite a flood of reports, it would seem to mean one of two things: either the reports were mistaken, or the President neglected to do her job.

When Park visited the Headquarters, she asked why it was so difficult to find the passengers when they were supposed to be wearing life vests. This lack of any grasp on the most basic situation is the kind of thing that would never have come out of her mouth had she properly read the reports.

Hundreds of children lost their lives waiting for help during those seven hours that remain shrouded in mystery. It makes all the sense in the world for people to be asking what the President did and where she was during this so-called “golden time,” when she seemed to have no grasp on the situation at all. The reason victims’ family members have gone on hunger strike to demand a real special law on the tragedy is because they want the truth about what the President, the administration, and the state did during that time frame. The seven hours have already become a heated issue in the National Assembly. Now, with a report in Japan’s Sankei Shimbun newspaper, they’ve turned into a diplomatic issue and a legal battle. For the Blue House, concealment could end up being a very costly strategy.

 presides over the first meeting at the Central Disaster Headquarters. President Park first received a report of the sinking at 10 am that day. Her whereabouts in the intervening seven hours have not been made public. (Blue House photo pool)
presides over the first meeting at the Central Disaster Headquarters. President Park first received a report of the sinking at 10 am that day. Her whereabouts in the intervening seven hours have not been made public. (Blue House photo pool)

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