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The recent allegations of interference in state decisions by Chung Yoon-hoi and the so-called “Blue House triumvirate” is drawing renewed criticisms of the Park Geun-hye administration’s dependence on an unofficial “circle” for decisions and its emphasis on secrecy.

Those two factors had previously been cited in a number of other political crises the administration has faced since taking office last year, including the catastrophic nomination choices that were perhaps the single biggest reason for Park’s declining approval ratings. Now they appear implicated in the power struggle among the president’s inner circle, which is coming to widespread attention with the Chung document scandal.

Many observers in the ruling Saenuri Party (NFP) are already openly fretting about Park becoming a “lame duck” just two years into her presidency.

“Unelected inner circles have been a problem for every administration, and the reason is because the public organization isn’t functioning the way it should,” said Saenuri lawmaker Choung Byoung-gug at a meeting of the party’s supreme council and prominent lawmakers at the National Assembly early on Dec. 3.

“When the country isn’t being run in a transparent way with appropriate communication, that‘s when you end up with a ‘secret circle,’” Choung added.

“We’ve seen through history that this is when a president starts turning into a lame duck,” he warned.

The opposition blamed Park‘s approach to filling government positions. Chung Sye-kyun, a member of the emergency committee for the leading opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy (NPAD), took the Park’s administration to task for its “imperial nominations” and “lack of vetting” at a committee meeting that morning.

“The result of that is internal power battles, and ‘Chung-gate’ is what happens when that backfires,” Chung said.

Former President Kim Young-sam (1993-98) once said that “nominations are everything.” Indeed, the power to decide who gets named is perhaps the single biggest kind of influence in politics. Power battles are the inevitable consequence of that.

Park was facing questions about a secret circle making nominations and decisions as early as her candidacy in the 2012 election - questions that grew louder after she was elected and started filling her transitional committee. Park is notoriously focused on “security,” with a tendency to forgo an open and transparent system for nominations in favor of surprise decisions. Because there has been no way to know the procedures or processes behind the decisions, many have speculated about a secret circle operating behind the scenes. And without any knowledge of the channels behind the recommendations, it’s been impossible to assign blame where it’s due when one of the major nominee bows out over misbehavior that was missed in the vetting process.

Park’s first nomination, former transitional committee chair and Blue House spokesman Yoon Chang-jung, was also the first decided under a tight veil of security. When Yoon, an editorialist who had been embroiled in controversy over extremely right-wing opinions, was selected as the committee’s senior spokesman, politicians offered all sorts of speculation on who was behind the nomination. Neither Park nor Yoon was forthcoming.

A symbolic illustration of Park’s nomination approach came when Yoon announced the list of committee members, including Chairman Kim Yong-joon. At the time, Yoon produced a brown envelope, tightly wrapped in tape, and declared, “Because security is such an important thing in nominations, I am disclosing [the names] before all of you now.” Yoon went on to deliver only the information that was written on the document inside. Many within the party suggest it may have drafted by the triumvirate on Park’s orders.

Kim’s later nomination for Prime Minister was handled with such secrecy that even then-Saenuri chairman Hwang Woo-yea was unaware right up until the announcement. Because the party, politicians, and Blue House have to coordinate for the confirmation hearing, typical practice for Prime Minister or Cabinet nominees is to ask the ruling party chairman for an opinion - or at least give some kind of “heads up” before the official announcement. That didn’t happen, and it was just five days later that Kim, the man whose nomination was kept under such tight wraps, bowed out over ethical accusations involving his son having avoided mandatory military service and real estate speculation. He was the first of Park‘s Blue House nominees to bow out, but by no means the last.

Park’s aversion to open and official procedures in nominations has been seen numerous times since then. Yeungnam University professor Choi Oi-chul, a close associate of Park’s, was the one to notify when Ahn Dae-hee was nominated in July to replace Prime Minister Chung Hong-won after Chung announced plans to resign over the Sewol ferry sinking. Under normal procedures, Chief of Staff Kim Ki-choon would have been the window to the public; instead, a member of Park’s inner circle was responsible for announcing a nomination for the post of Prime Minister.

With all the emphasis on secrecy, even the nominees themselves have been kept in the dark until just before the announcement. Hwang Chul-joo, who was nominated to head the Small and Medium Business Administration (SMBA), ended up bowing out just three days later over the blind trust system for stocks. He had reportedly been contacted to agree to a background check for his vetting just one day before the nomination was announced.

The problem, some say, is that Park shows no sign of wanting to resolve what is turning into a recurrent problem. In June, Park pledged to set up a new Blue House office for a Senior Secretary to the President for Personnel Affairs; the following month, Jeong Jin-chul was named to fill the post. But the secretary’s role is little more than as a working-level official for the Blue House nomination committee headed by Chief of Staff Kim Ki-choon. Few expect Jeong, with his background in administrative bureaucracy, to be willing to speak hard truths to Park.

In 2012, Park blamed the “blabbermouths” when the list of nominees to the Saenuri emergency committee was made public. As long as this view persists, and as long as Park only keeps obedient people around her - “Secretaries don’t have mouths,” as one former Blue House secretary put it - the idea of a nomination “system” will remain a distant dream, and the controversy over an unelected inner circle will only continue.

By Cho Hye-jeong, staff reporter

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