hankyoreh

President Yoon Suk-yeol takes questions from reporters at a press conference on May 9, 2024, to mark the second anniversary of his inauguration. (pool photo)

By Choi Hye-jeong, editorial writer

Political insiders talk about three stages of communication among past presidents.

After the honeymoon period is over and the president’s approval rating begins to drop, the frustrated president pushes the various government ministries to publicize his policies. The assumption here is that public discontent is due to ignorance of those policies.

Toward the middle of the president’s term in office, after friction with the National Assembly heats up and flogging government policy proves ineffectual, the president makes a public turn, attempting to communicate directly with the people.

Then at the end of his presidency, the president attempts a dialogue with history, claiming that history will be the judge of his administration.

Following the ruling party’s humiliating defeats first in a by-election for the mayor of Seoul’s Gangseo District and then in the general elections on April 10, President Yoon Suk-yeol, who marked the second anniversary of his inauguration on May 10, seems to have run through an abbreviated version of the first and second stages of presidential communication.

Yoon emphasized the public livelihood and public communication after the by-election last year and then said that better communication was critical after the general elections. However, there are some subtle differences in what he emphasized and in who is supposed to be doing the communication.

Early this year, Yoon placed the stress on various ministries promoting their policies. In a Cabinet meeting on Jan. 9, for example, he asked officials to “view everything from the people’s perspective when deciding what information to convey, where it should be conveyed, and how it should be conveyed,” while approvingly citing the city of Chungju’s YouTube channel.

But after his party’s defeat in the general elections, he overcame his long-standing distaste about meeting with Lee Jae-myung, head of the main opposition Democratic Party, and convened his own press conference for the first time in one year and nine months. He basically went before the public to clear away what he viewed as “misunderstandings.”

But everything he said was grounded in the exact same assumptions: his conviction that his basic approach to governance is correct, and his pride in working diligently and effectively, despite a few issues with communication.

The press conference on May 9 was a chance to confirm Yoon’s true feelings. Before actually taking questions, Yoon devoted some time to making a public report on the first two years of his administration. The 22 minutes he spent tooting his own horn suggest how hurt he is about Koreans’ failure to appreciate everything he has done for them.

While Yoon did say he felt “sorry” and had a “heavy heart” about the intractable challenges surrounding people’s livelihoods, he blamed those difficulties on external factors without mentioning the policy failures that had provoked criticism of Yoon’s inability to manage the economy.

In a jab at the National Assembly, Yoon said, “What the public wants is for both parties to stop their political bickering and work together with the administration on behalf of the economy.” It’s pretty rich of Yoon to be suddenly calling for cooperation when he has been slamming the opposition as “anti-government forces” and “communist and totalitarian forces” for the past two years and has thumbed his nose at legislative prerogative by vetoing no fewer than nine bills.

Needless to say, Yoon offered no apologies.

The sense that Yoon was barking up the wrong tree grew even clearer in the press conference that followed his report to the public. He left no doubt that he doesn’t intend to allow special prosecutors to probe scandals concerning his wife Kim Keon-hee or accusations of improper meddling in the investigation of a Marine’s death in flood rescue work last year. But those two cases are not only the key political issues at present, but also litmus tests for whether the president has had a change of heart.

While referring to a special prosecutor bill about allegations that Kim Keon-hee manipulated stock prices at Deutsch Motors, Yoon said that “relitigating an issue that has already been adequately investigated is a political attack that isn’t consistent with the spirit of the special prosecutor system.” And as for the bill empowering a special prosecutor to probe alleged interference in the investigation of the Marine’s death, Yoon said it would be better to wait for the outcome of ongoing investigations and legal procedures.

But Yoon never addressed allegations that he had criticized the Ministry of National Defense for the outcome of its investigation. In the end, Yoon has reached the naïve conclusion that since his governing strategy is correct and he has nothing to apologize for, he just needs to maximize his administration’s public relations output.

Yoon is reportedly confident that the responsibility for the People Power Party’s crushing defeat in the general elections lies with the party itself and interim leader Han Dong-hoon, who focused their campaign not on bread-and-butter economic issues but on rejecting the opposition’s framing of the election as a referendum on Yoon. That’s why overhauling his presidential style isn’t even in Yoon’s playbook.

Yoon doesn’t think he’s responsible for the spate of flubbed appointments, poor handling of the economy, erosion of party democracy, collapse of collaborative governance, oppression of the press and scandals surrounding the first lady over the past two years.

Despite Yoon’s repeated griping about his political opponents holding a majority in the National Assembly, the government is wholly to blame for the Itaewon crowd crush, the botched Scout Jamboree and Busan’s failed World Expo bid. Someone needs to be held responsible, but Yoon can just shift the blame for all these issues to the previous government or to the relevant public servants.

Since Yoon isn’t capable of admitting that the election defeat was a judgment on himself, his remaining three years in office won’t be easy. The ruling party, which ought to be supporting his various policy initiatives, has already devolved into an every-man-for-himself scramble, and the main opposition party has already said it won’t cooperate with Yoon unless he enacts changes to his governing philosophy.

Yoon reinstated the position of senior secretary to the president for civil affairs, ostensibly in a bid to listen more closely to public sentiment. But his claim that a secretariat led by a former prosecutor is not designed to consolidate control of law enforcement agencies is even more laughable.

What Yoon confirmed once again in this press conference is that he hasn’t changed and doesn’t intend to change, either. Even if he communicates with the public more frequently going forward, that will probably just consist of the kind of one-sided monologues we’ve already seen over the past two years.

I find myself exhausted just imagining what kind of self-serving communication we’ll see in the final years of a man nicknamed the “59-minute president,” because he can’t help spending 59 minutes of every hour talking about himself.

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