hankyoreh

questioning President Park Geun-hye’s whereabouts for seven hours on Apr. 16

By Lee Je-hoon, senior staff writer

“August 10. Morning: Spent at villa in Narusawamura Village, Yamanashi Prefecture. Afternoon: 12:46 - Lunch with mother (Yoko), senior secretary at Ricenta, Italian restaurant in Kawaguchiko, Yamanashi. Back to villa at 2:03. 6:34 - Dinner with friends at Kokyu, Chinese restaurant in Yamanashi. Back to villa at 8:59.”

“August 11. Morning: Spent at villa. Afternoon: 2:59 - Arrived home in Tomigaya, Tokyo. 5:58 - Treated at dentist’s office in first House of Representatives members’ hall. 6:48 -- Dinner at Ryugetsuen barbecue restaurant in Yotsuya, Tokyo, with Jiji Press commentator Kiyotaka Kato, political journalist Yoshimasa Suenobu, and former Cabinet adviser Yoichi Takahashi. Home by 9:14.”

This detailed list of the activities of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Sunday, Aug. 10 and Monday, Aug. 11 was printed on page 4 of the Asahi Shimbun newspaper. It includes the names of whom he met where and where, and what they did, all recorded down to the minute. Lunches with this mother, dentist appointments, and dinners with media officials are all fair game for disclosure. The “Prime Minister’s day” is a daily feature in major Japanese dailies, drafted by reporters with Kyodo News and Jiji Press from their own observations and information provided by the Prime Minister’s office.

The question of President Park Geun-hye’s “missing seven hours” on Apr. 16, the day of the tragic Sewol ferry sinking, is one that demands an answer. Not a single passenger returned alive during or after those seven hours. Yet the inconsistent details offered by the Blue House and Saenuri Party (NFP) to date are only feeding the questions swirling around the gap. On July 30, Cho Won-jin, the party’s secretary on the National Assembly special committee for a parliamentary audit of the disaster, responded to the opposition’s demands to call Blue House first deputy office chief Jeong Ho-seong for a hearing by saying, “Does this mean we’re supposed to be talking about the president’s private life?” By Aug. 13, he had changed his tune and was declaring that “everything the President does from when she wakes up until she goes to bed is working hours. She doesn’t have a private life.” Saenuri floor leader Lee Wan-koo said on Aug. 1, “Everything the president does is an issue of national security.” So what is one supposed to make of the Japanese newspapers sharing the Prime Minister’s schedule down to the minute, or the White House releasing US President Barack Obama’s schedule down to five-minute blocks?

Cho said on Aug. 13 that a total of 18 reports were given between 10 am on the day of the accident and 5:15 pm, when the President arrived at the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters. (This conflicts with the figure of “24 written and wire reports” that the Blue House initially gave the National Assembly.) But things get even stranger when you break the figures down. The President issued exactly two orders after receiving reports, at 10:15 and 10:30 in the morning. After that, there was no response - not even an emergency meeting. Six hours and forty-five minutes passed without a word from the President, all while 304 people were fighting vainly for their lives. It’s positively chilling. Then Park shows up at the headquarters at 5:15 with the baffling question, “How can it be difficult to find or rescue the students when they’re supposed to be wearing life vests?”

Chief of Staff Kim Ki-choon and other Blue House sources have merely said that Park was “present” at the Blue House during those seven hours. So what did she do there? The important thing is not where the commander-in-chief was when this disaster was unfolding, it’s how she responded. What could possibly have been a more important matter for her to attend to when 304 of her citizens were facing death by drowning? That’s why we need to know the truth about what reports the Blue House adviser give and when, and what decisions the President made from them, what she ordered done and how. It’s the only way to find where responsibility truly lies and make sure this kind of disaster does not happen again. I don’t care what kind of embarrassing rumors people might be spreading. The people of South Korea have a right to know the truth about that seven-hour period, and the President and Blue House have an obligation to tell it.

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]