hankyoreh

Kim Byung-joon smiles during a ceremony announcing his appointment as a candidate for Prime Minister

On Nov. 2, South Korean President Park Geun-hye abruptly named Kim Byong-joon, a professor at Kookmin University, to be the country’s new prime minister. This was Park’s second unilateral personnel reshuffle, following her sudden sacking of senior secretaries at the Blue House on Oct. 30.

In a word, this is unbelievable. It is disheartening and infuriating to see Park’s failure to recognize the gravity of the situation and the petty schemes she concocts to survive the crisis. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that Park is bringing the widespread public opposition on herself.

Park’s appointment of Kim Byong-joon as Prime Minister shows the full extent of her complacent and self-centered understanding of the current situation. She seems to have thought that she could head off pushback from the opposition parties by appointing Kim (who served as policy chief at the Blue House under former president Roh Moo-hyun, in office 2003-2008) and by promising him wide-ranging powers. She seems to have thought that, with the prosecutors speeding up their investigation into Choi Sun-sil, the public wrath could be assuaged by having Choi and a handful of officials arrested.

Few misjudgments have been as bad as this one. Right now, Choi Sun-sil is not the person that the public has a problem with: that person is Park herself. South Koreans think that the crux of the problem lies with Park, who failed to deal with Choi’s influence-peddling. Park went an entire year without receiving a single standard face-to-face briefing from her cabinet ministers or senior secretaries at the Blue House, but she regularly discussed state affairs with the daughter of Choi Tae-min, who used the occult to win an audience with her decades ago. Now South Koreans are asking the fundamental question of whether that is normal.

That‘s why not only the opposition parties but also some segments of the ruling Saenuri Party called for the creation of a neutral cabinet by having Park remove herself from direct control of the government.

But even that is a moderate proposal that is being made by both the ruling and opposition parties. The view on the street is much harsher than that. Public opinion polls show that more than half of South Koreans believe that Park should step down or be impeached. This means that a majority of the people have concluded that Park is neither fit nor able to run the country.

But now that Park has appointed Kim Byong-joon to be Prime Minister without even discussing the idea with leaders from the ruling or opposition parties (not to mention sounding out public opinion about the idea), we can’t help concluding that she has no intention of abiding by the will of the people. Just like former president Chun Doo-hwan (1980-88), who attempted to suppress the entire country’s desire for constitutional reform in 1987 only to provoke democracy protests in June, Park may as well be pouring fuel on the raging fire of public anger.

The Blue House and Saenuri Party leader Lee Jung-hyun say that appointing an official from the Roh administration as prime minister effectively creates a neutral cabinet, but this is a risible claim. A prime minister that Park has appointed unilaterally and in defiance of the will of the people will be unable to run the government with stability and independence. There’s no telling what Kim was thinking when he accepted the position of prime minister, but such a prime minister would signify nothing more than a temporary flak jacket for Park.

Park can’t let go of her deluded desire to hold on to power, and that is only increasing the public’s anger and alienation. Now is the time for Park to cancel her nomination of prime minister and to have a frank discussion with lawmakers from the ruling and opposition parties. We hope that Park will refrain from making poor choices that will only provoke public opposition.

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