hankyoreh

President Yoon Suk-yeol speaks at a Cabinet meeting held at the presidential office in Seoul on April 16, 2024. (Yonhap)

Even after the ruling party’s crushing defeat in the general elections on April 10, President Yoon Suk-yeol maintained on Tuesday that he has done his best to move the country in the right direction while only acknowledging that he didn’t do enough to make that change tangible to the public. 

In his first direct remarks after elections that amounted to a punishing rebuke to his administration, Yoon still emphasized that the basic direction of his leadership is correct.

Koreans who spoke with the Hankyoreh shared their sense of dread. “Seeing [the president] insisting that he did a good job when he ought to be bowing humbly before the public makes me worried about the next few years,” one said.

“We must humbly accept the popular sentiment that was revealed through these elections. We will engage in more communication with flexibility and an open mind, and I will be the first to listen closely to popular sentiment,” Yoon said in a live broadcast of his opening remarks to a Cabinet meeting at the presidential office in Yongsan on Tuesday morning.

“I, as president, am the most to blame. I’m sorry for not paying more attention to the Korean people and serving their wishes,” Yoon said during the untelevised closing remarks of the meeting according to a high-ranking official in the presidential office who spoke with reporters on Tuesday afternoon.

In the nearly 12 minutes of the televised opening remarks, Yoon emphasized the progress he has made on managing inflation, normalizing the real estate market and rolling back the previous administration’s nuclear phaseout and strongly implied that nothing is wrong with his approach to governance.

“In terms of the bigger picture, these policies are designed to benefit the public, but we fell short in the details,” Yoon said.

Nor did Yoon specifically address a long-running dispute between the government and the medical community and a number of scandals that are thought to have been behind the ruling party’s disastrous loss in the general elections. Yoon had been slammed for appointing Lee Jong-sup, his former defense chief, as ambassador to Australia despite allegations that he had illicitly pressured the investigation of the death of a Marine in the line of duty. Yoon had also come under fire after his wife Kim Keon-hee accepted a gift of a luxury handbag in apparent violation of a graft law.

“If [the president] fundamentally changed his approach to government because of the election [results], that could mean not keeping his promise to the public,” noted a high-ranking official at the presidential office.

Yoon said he would “have to work closely with the National Assembly” while stressing that he would continue to push for reforms in the areas of labor, education, pension and medical services. But he didn’t directly mention letting the opposition, including Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung, take part in governance.

Yoon expressed his remorse to the public not directly, through the live broadcast, but indirectly, through the lips of a high-ranking official at the presidential office. When Yoon was off the record, during the closing remarks of the Cabinet meeting and a meeting with his aides, he admitted that “the election results were in part an assessment of the party’s campaign efforts, but they also amount to a harsh public assessment of how our administration is running the country.”

“Far from an apology, this was a self-righteous declaration that the president means to adhere to his bullheaded approach to politics,” said Han Min-soo, a spokesperson for the Democratic Party.

Kim Bo-hyeop, a spokesperson for the Rebuilding Korea Party, added that the president is “fully opposed to the popular sentiment confirmed in the general elections” and has “declared war against the public.”

By Lee Seung-joon, staff reporter; Kang Jae-gu, staff reporter 

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