hankyoreh

President Park Geun-hye salutes during a promotion ceremony for military officials

The Choi Sun-sil scandal that is unfolding so vividly before the public’s eyes right now is beyond what anyone could have imagined. State institutions were craven and weak in the face of a behind-the-scenes power broker. It’s symbolic of the untrammeled authority such a figure enjoyed to see the way people carrying the title of “Blue House administrative officer” bowed and scraped to Choi. And it‘s hardly just them: evidence is surfacing that the administration’s best and brightest ministers and Blue House secretaries - like Senior Secretary to the President for Policy Coordination Ahn Jong-beom - were just mice to Choi’s cat.

What this situation has made clear is that it’s these power brokers and “door knocker authorities” who’ve provided the strength to sustain Park Geun-hye as president. We have no way of knowing if they’re working at Park’s service, or if she is serving as their avatar. What is certain is that Park herself is the one who has fostered and sheltered this kind of behind-the-scenes monopoly on the executive branch. Could it have been on anything other than her wishes that a recommendation report on the nomination of a Blue House Senior Secretary to the President for Civil Affairs was passed along to Choi - someone who has no connection with vetting of public officials - or that Choi was intimately acquainted with top-level secrets involving back-channel meetings between the South and North Korean militaries? Is Park going to play innocent and claim she had no idea that part of her favored door-knob triumvirate, Secretary Jeong Ho-seong, passed along 30 cm-thick “presidential reports” every day?

At this point, the Park administration is basically on life support. It’s in a vegetative state: it may be breathing, but all its systems are paralyzed. And it’s not just because of the great tsunami of public anger about “Choi Sun-sil Gate.” Those power brokers were Park’s brain. They reviewed and decided everything from the clothes and accessories she wore to the drafts of her speeches. Suddenly, that brain is now gone. Without her brain trust beside her, Park is like Samson without his hair. It‘s as though she has lost her ability to govern.

The problem is that this has left national governance in a state of total paralysis. A country can’t function when its president has already been impeached in the hearts and minds of the public. A number of solutions have been suggested for smoothing over the immediate national crisis - everything from an en masse resignation of Blue House secretaries and Cabinet members to the formation of a nonparty Cabinet and the president’s departure from the Saenuri Party. But no prescription is going to work so long as Park remains confused about where she stands right now. Indeed, the Blue House’s perceptions remain seriously divorced from reality. Blue House spokesperson Jeong Yeon-guk only fed the public‘s anger with his bizarre response on Oct. 26 when asked by whether the prior leaks of Presidential speeches was a violation of the Presidential Records Act. “If you analyze the media, I think it leans toward ’no,‘” he said.

It may be sheer coincidence that Park marks the end of her political life on Oct. 26, the anniversary of her father Park Chung-hee’s 1979 assassination. Like her father, the end came as a result of problems inside the administration. Like her father, she caused her own fall by lording over the public and treating them like fools. Yet Park doesn’t seem to have yet gotten over her delusion. Hopefully, she will come to a realization soon. There won’t be a miraculous political comeback. Her steamroller tactics and ploys won‘t work anymore. Understanding this will be the starting point for Park’s survival - and South Korea’s.

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