hankyoreh

Won Hee-ryng

By Hwang Joon-bum

Grand National Party supreme council members Yoo Seung-min, Won Hee-rong, and Nam Kyung-pil tendered their resignations Wednesday, calling for dissolution of the party leadership and sweeping reforms to the party.

Chairman Hong Joon-pyo rejected the "impromptu resignations," appealing to the lawmakers for a vote of confidence.

Now, the GNP is in turmoil over its future course. It has a deadline for replacing its leadership and dealing with the aftereffects of such a change, including the role of former chairwoman and leading presidential contender Park Geun-hye.

In an emergency press conference at its headquarters in Yeouido on Wednesday, Yoo, a member of the party's pro-Park wing, said he had been mulling over a resignation since the defeat of candidate Na Kyung-won in the Seoul mayoral by-election.

"I decided to resign after sensing a great deal of responsibility for the party's lackluster response to the DDoS attack on the National Election Commission, he explained.

In his resignation press conference, Won said, "This system under Hong Joon-pyo and belief in the invulnerability of Park Geun-hye will not do."

"To create a healthy and reform-oriented conservative party, the Grand National Party need to be utterly dismantled," Won added.

With the resignations of three of the five supreme council members elected at the July 4 party conventions, the Hong system effectively lies in ruins.

But Hong stated his refusal of the impromptu resignations at his own press conference.

"The unanimous opinion of our senior and most prominent lawmakers is that now is a time for us to be focusing all our energies on public welfare issues and policy reforms in the budget meeting of the National Assembly," Hong said.

A fierce debate erupted at a general meeting of GNP lawmakers, with Won and others making calls for Hong to step down.

Within the party, some are discussing a plan for Hong to step down immediately, with outside figures brought in to form an emergency countermeasures committee and a party convention held some time around January to elect a new leadership.

Others suggested that Park Geun-hye needs to move to the foreground, either by returning to her previous position as chairwoman or taking on a major role in the emergency committee or general election countermeasures committee.

Some lawmakers representing districts in the greater Seoul area are reportedly even considering defection from the party.

Observers are interpreting the resignation of Yoo, a key associate of Park's, as a way of dragging the former chairwoman into the foreground as she and the party face a crisis situation. Choi Kyung-hwan, another associate of Park's, reported that Yoo and Park had a telephone conversation in the morning and that Park was "disconcerted."

The mood among the pro-Park majority was that after shying away from taking the mound, it was "no longer possible to simply get around it," as lawmaker Lee Hahn-koo put it. Some within the wing are saying Park needs to serve as chairwoman of the emergency countermeasures committee, a position with absolute authority. If Hong fails to hold out and resigns, the argument goes, the only option left with be a system led by this committee.

Within Park's camp, there is indeed a belief that Park is the only one who can set the party in order, and that she would naturally be elected as head of the committee.

But a number in the GNP are expressing pessimism about the prospects even if Park takes the foreground.

During his press conference Wednesday, Won Hee-ryong said, "If we keep seeing this kind of insular and passive behavior, we wouldn't succeed with Park Chung-hee, never mind Park Geun-hye."

Meanwhile, the Cheong Wa Dae is fretting over its inability to take action amid a "red alert" situation that carries the strong possibility of a collapse for the Hong Joon-pyo system. What is apparent is that any intervention it makes would only make the situation worse. Currently, it has its feelers up for possibilities, but no room for the Cheong Wa Dae to intervene has presented itself.

A member of the Lee Myung-bak wing of the GNP said the president "has already lost his ability to control the ruling party internally."

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