hankyoreh

Sept. 11. (by Kim Kyung-ho

By Lee Se-young, staff reporter

On Sep. 11, Park Young-sun, floor leader for the New Politics Alliance for Democracy (NPAD), named Lee Sang-don as the head of the party’s emergency committee, a position responsible for party reform. Lee is professor emeritus at Chung-Ang University, as well as a former member of the Saenuri Party (NFP)’s emergency committee. NPAD party members are expressing extreme hostility for the choice because of Lee’s political conservatism and because he helped President Park Geun-hye’s election victory while serving on the Saenuri Party’s emergency committee during the 2012 presidential campaign. Park Young-sun’s decision to nominate an emergency chair from outside the party is sowing the seeds of new conflict.

staff photographer)

On the morning of Sept. 12, Park said in an NPAD meeting that she will resign as party leader when the ordinary session of the National Assembly begins. Park said that with the intention of reforming and expanding the party, she is recruiting both progressive and conservative outside figures. From the progressive side she is targeting Seoul National University law professor Ahn Kyung-hwan. It has not been confirmed whether Ahn and Lee will accept joint chairship of the NPAD.

Park had originally planned to announce Lee Sang-don being named emergency chair on Sept. 12. With Park facing sharp criticism and questions about why she would risk subverting the party’s identity by recruiting Lee for the job, it remains uncertain whether she will be able to push forward with her plans to install him as emergency chair.

During a policy meeting about public livelihood bills that was held at the National Assembly on Thursday, Park said she was planning to recruit a competent individual from the outside who could lead the Public Consensus Reform Committee, the official name of the NPAD emergency committee. “I am in favor of recruiting someone who has a theoretical background in politics and party reform and who has a sophisticated understanding of real politics,” Park said.

While Park did not specify who the outside figure would be, the possibility that it was Lee Sang-don emerged immediately after the meeting through several channels. That morning, political sources confirmed, Lee had called a politician who was a close friend of his. He told the friend that he had been offered the position of head of the NPAD emergency committee and asked his opinion. Another source in the National Assembly said that Lee had accepted the recruitment offer.

As a result of the continuing failure of the negotiations about the special Sewol Law in August, party sentiment about Park’s simultaneously holding two positions as floor leader and emergency chair began to sour. Since the beginning of September, she has been courting people of high renown in academia and civil society to chair the emergency committee in her stead. These candidates have included Jo Guk, a law professor at Seoul National University, and former lawmaker Kim Bu-gyeom, sources say.

“Park started by sounding out the opinions of figures in the progressive and reform camps, but most of them declined, citing the complicated situation inside the party. Eventually, she had to approach the conservatives,” a source in the National Assembly said.

Speculation that Park was recruiting Lee Sang-don stirred up a hornets’ nest inside the party. One associate of Moon Jae-in, the figure regarded as the head of the pro-Roh faction of the party, said, “This morning, Moon got a call from Park in which she asked him what he thought about Lee Sang-don becoming chair of the emergency committee. Moon expressed his concern, predicting there would be a strong backlash from within the party and that it would ignite a debate about the party’s identity”. Moon learned that an outside figure was being appointed while trying to persuade Jo Guk to accept the position as emergency chair at Park’s request, sources say.

The group of first- and second-term lawmakers who supported Park Young-sun when she was elected as floor leader in May and as emergency chair in August have also turned their back on her. The group, which is called “A Better Future,” held an emergency meeting on Thursday afternoon. They were united in calling for the party leaders to retract his appointment, saying that Lee was a very inappropriate person to appoint as emergency chair since he had formerly been on the emergency committee of the ruling Saenuri Party.

There is also criticism that the appointment process itself was problematic. “This seems like a sneaky attempt to get media coverage for the appointment and watch the fallout without testing the waters inside the party first. Park is repeating the mistakes of her failure in the negotiations over the special Sewol Law,” said one second-term legislator associated with former party head Kim Han-gil.

The Innovation Meeting, which is largely composed of third-term lawmakers, and the Popular Alliance for Democracy and Peace, another party opinion group that is associated with the late Kim Geun-tae, will also be discussing what should be done about Lee Sang-don’s appointment, sources said.

Another subject of controversy is the fact that Park did not clearly express her own position about her position as emergency chair on Thursday, which she currently holds along with floor leader. Immediately after the meeting on Thursday, figures close to Park hinted that she would make the final decision about whether to relinquish the position of emergency chair entirely or to share the position with an outside figure depending upon the opinions of party members.

In regard to this, certain party members even suggested that Park was bringing in an outside figure who was ignorant of the situation inside the party as her partner so that she could exercise influence on the appointment of regional party bosses, who would be a factor in party leadership in the future as well as appointments in the general election.

“If Park wants to take responsibility for the chaos in the party, she should simply give up the position of emergency chair. I find myself wondering whether personal ambition has crept in,” said one multi-term lawmaker who is close to former party head Sohn Hak-kyu.

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