hankyoreh

Sept. 16. (by Lee Jeong-yong

President Park Geun-hye emphatically rejected calls from Sewol tragedy victims’ families to give investigative and prosecutorial authority to the fact-finding committee probing the incident. “As president,” she said on Sept. 16, “I cannot do anything that would undermine separation of powers or the judicial system, nor is this a matter for me to decide.” It’s disappointing to hear her say this, but more than that, it’s difficult to know just how to feel after seeing such a staggeringly callous, brazen, cruel attitude from Park. We would expect that when the president opens her mouth for the first time in months about the sinking, she’d have the common human decency to start with a word of consolation to the people who had to spend a grief-stricken first Chuseok holiday without their children last week. Instead, Park’s remarks were ice cold and bloodthirsty. Every word of them shows that she no longer feels the slightest pang of conscience or contrition the tragedy.

Perhaps the best evidence of the skewed way the president sees the world was her use of the term “the wishes of genuine family members of the victims.” This, of course, can be turned around to mean that the calls to give investigative authority to the fact-finding committee represent the wishes of family members who are somehow less than genuine. It’s quite convenient for her: she divides the bereaved relatives into “genuine” and “not genuine,” and decrees that demands for a comprehensive investigation into the Sewol tragedy are the politically motivated acts of “impure elements.”

It’s already been shown that the reasons Park gave for refusing to give authority to the committee are, in terms of legal theory, hogwash. We don’t need to go into it again here. But apart from anything else, the first thing the president ought to be doing is explaining why she broke her own promise to “ensure that family members have no objections to the investigation” and “hold the special prosecutors’ investigation and parliamentary audit the families want.”

It’s also hard not to laugh when Park says that “most of the problems in the tragedy have already come to light.” We may have found out about the misbehavior of the Sewol’s captain and crew, or Chonghaejin Marine (the ferry company), but we still do not have all the facts about the ineptitude and irresponsibility of the administration, the ones who allowed all those precious lives to sink into the sea before their very eyes. And that’s to say nothing of the main question: the baffling response from the Blue House, including the mystery of where Park disappeared to for a crucial seven-hour period the day of the tragedy (Apr. 16). When the president appeared at a Cabinet meeting offering one reason or another for rejecting the families’ demands, what she was really doing was shielding herself. Now she’s dropped her previous position that the special Sewol Law was a matter for the National Assembly to decide, and made it her open “policy” that there can be no more concessions on the second agreement for the law.

Finally, there’s the matter of the distaste Park expressed about ongoing speculation about her whereabouts on the day of the tragedy, calling it “an insult to the president and an insult to the people of South Korea.” It certainly makes sense that she would feel upset to hear people spreading rumors about her love life. But there’s something more important than that, and that’s getting to the bottom of how she and the Blue House responded to a national catastrophe. To act like that’s something the public doesn’t need to know and shouldn‘t try to find out - now that’s an insult to the people of South Korea.

staff photographer)

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