hankyoreh

President Yoon Suk-yeol heads into his office after briefly answering questions from the press on Nov. 18. (Yoon Woon-sik/The Hankyoreh)

On Monday, President Yoon Suk-yeol indefinitely suspended the brief Q&A sessions he’s been regularly holding with reporters while commuting to his office in Yongsan. It has been six months and 10 days since he took office and just one day since a wall was installed where these sessions usually take place.

Critics say the president’s decision to halt the so-called doorstepping sessions, which leveraged his conflict with broadcaster MBC, reverses a previous promise by Yoon to communicate directly with the media.

“We have decided to suspend doorstepping as of Nov. 21,” the presidential office’s spokesperson said Monday morning in a notice to the press. “Given the recent unsavory situation, we judged that it could no longer be continued without preparing fundamental measures to prevent a recurrence,” the statement read.

According to one key official at the presidential office, “there is no reason to continue with doorstepping, which threatens the original purpose and makes people uncomfortable in a situation where acts close to disorder occur and there is a risk of recurrence.”

The official said that the presidential office will consider resuming the sessions “when we are confident that we can develop it in a better way.”

The “unsavory situation” mentioned by the presidential office seems to be referring to what happened during the Q&A session on Friday.

On Friday, Yoon said regarding the exclusion of MBC journalists from boarding the presidential jet that the decision was “an unavoidable measure as part of the president’s responsibility to protect the constitution because [MBC] displayed malicious behavior by coming in between the [ROK-US] alliance with fake news.”

An MBC reporter then proceeded to ask the president, “What was malicious?” which was followed by the secretary for public relations planning, Lee Ki-jung, intervening, resulting in a war of words between the reporter and Lee.

The presidential office also made clear its intention to penalize MBC.

On Saturday night, the presidential office told its press corps steering committee that they were “reviewing measures” to take against MBC journalists to prevent a recurrence of another “unsavory” situation.

The measures under review included the cancellation of the registration of the reporters from the presidential office — with no possibility for MBC to recommend any additional reporters for one year — the suspension of access to the press room, and the replacement of reporters affiliated with MBC.

“It’s not like we're restricting news coverage just because certain media or reporters are missing,” a key official at the presidential office commented.

In reality, the presidential office introduced these measures against MBC as a condition for resuming the Q&A sessions.

Regarding this point, the presidential press corps refused to share its opinion, saying that "there are no regulations to be able to discuss disciplinary action [against MBC].”

As a result of this series of events, the morning Q&A sessions with reporters, which the president himself emphasized as “the most important reason for moving the presidential office to Yongsan” is now on the verge of extinction just 195 days after Yoon’s inauguration as president.

Yoon went to work at the presidential office on Monday but reporters were unable to cover the moment or get close since a wooden wall was installed at the front door of the lobby of the first floor the day before.

The opposition strongly criticized the president’s recent decisions.

Park Hong-keun, floor leader of the Democratic Party, criticized the president for “putting up an iron wall in front of the opposition and the public” and for “setting up a fake wall against the media,” adding that these moves constitute a cliff separating the administration from the South Korean people.

Similarly, Kim Hee-seo, chief spokesperson for the Justice Party, pointed out that the president’s talk of wanting to communicate directly with the people by leaving the Blue House was just “all for show.”

By Kim Mi-na, staff reporter; Joh Yun-yeong, staff reporter

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