With this decision South Korea effectively has two Presidents, one that handles domestic affairs and one for international affairs:
South Korea’s prime minister nominee Kim Byong-joon speaks with reporters in Seoul on Nov. 2, 2016. (Yonhap)
Prime Minister-designate Kim Byong-joon, if approved by parliament, will take control of domestic affairs, presidential aides said Wednesday, indicating President Park Geun-hye will take a back seat in running the country.
Their remarks presaged the introduction of a power-sharing governance structure in which the president takes charge of external affairs such as defense and foreign policy, with the premier calling all the shots on internal matters.
In a move to assuage public outrage over an influence-peddling scandal involving her close confidante, Park nominated Kim, policy advisor to late liberal President Roh Moo-hyun, and two Cabinet ministers. But opposition parties immediately called on her to cancel what they called “unilateral” nominations.
“(The designation of Kim) means that (Park) will virtually take a back seat (in running the country),” a source told Yonhap News Agency, declining to be named. “Nominee Kim will be the chief executive in charge of managing internal affairs.”
After completing a personnel overhaul of her secretariat, Park is expected to publicly explain her decision to delegate part of her executive power to the new prime minister, a source said.
“As soon as President Park openly confirms the authority of Prime Minister-designate Kim, it is fair to say we will have two presidents,” the official said over the phone. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but of course the opposition parties are not happy about this hand over of power because they likely want to drag out this scandal as long as possible.
Due to the Choi scandal the Saenuri Party name seems to be quite radioactive for anyone thinking of running for Korea’s next President to include even Ban Ki-moon:
The political firestorm threatening the presidency of Park Geun-hye is now jeopardizing longtime frontrunner UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s chance in next year’s presidential race.
According to Realmeter’s latest poll, announced on Monday, Ban was supported as the next president by 20.9 percent in the fourth week of October, down by 1.3 percentage points from the previous week.
Moon Jae-in, former chairman of the Minjoo Party of Korea, who was defeated by President Park in the 2012 race, was ranked second with 20.3 percent, up by 1.4 percentage points.
While Ban managed to remain the frontrunner for 13 consecutive weeks, the 0.6-percentage-point gap against Moon is within a margin of error.
Ban has never formally declared his bid, but Park loyalists in the Saenuri Party have enthusiastically expressed their desire to recruit him as their presidential candidate.
His tenure at the United Nations ends at the end of this year, and Ban said in September that he will return to Korea in January and address the people.
The latest poll was conducted from Monday to Friday of last week, and President Park and the Saenuri Party’s plummeting support was reflected in Ban’s popularity in the aftermath of the corruption scandal involving Park’s friend, Choi Soon-sil. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
Ask A Korean has a great post that really summarizes why Koreans so used to political corruption and scandals are so shocked by the revelations coming out of the Choi Soon-sil mess:
But the English language coverage of this scandal is missing something. The newspapers do have most of the facts, which they recount diligently. But they fail to fully account for the Korean public’s stunned disbelief. Although the scale of the corruption here is significant, Koreans have seen much, much worse. Not long ago, Korean people have seen Chun Doo-hwan, the former president/dictator, made off with nearly $1 billion, and this was back in the mid-1980s when the money was worth more than $4 billion in today’s dollars. Even the democratically elected presidents of Korea–every single one of them–suffered from corruption charges. Lee Myung-bak, the immediate predecessor to Park, saw his older brother (himself a National Assemblyman) go to prison over bribery. Lee’s controversial Four Rivers Project, which cost nearly $20 billion, was widely seen as a massive graft project to push government funding to his cronies who were operating construction companies.
For better or worse (mostly worse,) Korean people have come to expect corruption from their presidents. So why is this one by Park Geun-hye causing such a strong reaction? It is not because Korean people discovered that Park was corrupt; it is because they discovered Park was irrationally corrupt. Koreans are not being dismayed at the scale of the corruption; they are shocked to see what the scale of the corruption signifies.
Park Geun-hye’s corruption scandal revolves around a central question: why would the president risk her administration for Choi Soon-sil? In fact, one of Park’s selling points as the presidential candidate was that she was less likely to be corrupt because she had no family. Her parents–former dictator Park Chung-hee and his wife Yuk Yeong-su–were dead, and she was estranged from her sister and brother. This argument had a modicum of plausibility, since all the previous president’s corruption involved their family in some way. (Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung had issues with their sons; Roh Moo-hyun and Lee Myung-bak, their brothers.)
But the lack of family did not stop Park Geun-hye from being corrupt, because she apparently had to give money to Choi Soon-sil. But why did Park Geun-hye, the president, even bother with Choi Soon-sil, a nobody? To answer this question, we must look back into modern Korean history to trace the relationship between Park and Choi.
The more I read about Choi Soon-sil the more I realize she is basically President Park’s Huma Abedin, but she has no official government position. Fortunately for Huma Abedin if she ever has to show up for questioning by the FBI I doubt they would allow a media circus like this to occur:
Choi Soon-sil, who is suspected of having meddled in state affairs and peddled influence on various state projects by exploiting her decades-long friendship with President Park Geun-hye, passes through a huge group of reporters to enter the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office in Seoul for questioning on Oct. 31, 2016. (Yonhap)
The 60-year-old’s appeared at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office a little over a day after she returned from Europe, where she had been residing for nearly two months.
“I am so sorry,” she told reporters before entering the prosecutors’ office. “I have committed a deadly sin. Please forgive me.”
Her lawyer Lee Kyung-jae later said she was trying to express her feelings, adding her statements cannot be deemed as holding any legal meaning.
“She deeply regrets the fact that she caused such a huge confusion,” he told reporters in front of the Seoul High Prosecutors’ Office. “She thinks she should receive due punishment if there was any (violation of law).”
As she got out of a black sedan in black clothes, covering her face with a black hat and a scarf, some hundreds of reporters who had been waiting since early morning surrounded her. It was the first time she appeared in public after the scandal surfaced.
Some citizens engaged in surprise protests as she showed up, chanting and picketing “Down with Park Geun-hye!” and “Arrest Choi Soon-sil!” [Yonhap]
I guess it was only a matter of time before some sex scandal became part of the whole Choi Soon-shil mess in South Korea:
Ko Young-tae
The investigation by the prosecution on the influence-peddling scandal surrounding Choi Soon-sil, President Park Geun-hye’s confidant, shed light on Choi’s clandestine relationship with a host bar worker.
Ko Young-tae, 40, had voluntarily turned up at the prosecutor’s office for questioning late Thursday after entering the country earlier in the day. After a 40-hour prosecutorial investigation over how confidential documents including the President’s speeches reached Choi, he returned home around noon Saturday but was summoned again Sunday.
No details about the interrogation are available.
Ko is suspected of managing The Blue K and Widec Sports _ paper companies Choi set up in Korea and Germany allegedly to funnel money away from the Mir and K-Sports foundations.
Little is known about Ko.
He is a former member of the national saber team, winning a gold medal at the 1998 Asian Games in Bangkok.
Being through with sports, Ko worked at well-known host bars in Gangnam, southern Seoul, according to reports and witnesses. A host bar is an establishment where female customers are served by male hosts who engage in conversation as well as sometimes barter for sexual services. The two are believed to have met and become close at one such host bar, around 2006.
“Ko made a lot of money with his good looks,” said an anonymous man who introduced himself as Ko’s coworker at the bar during Kim Hyun-jung’s “NEWS SHOW” on Christian Broadcasting Service (CBS) Radio, Friday.
“I assume that Choi was one of Ko’s close customers as they are on friendly terms with each other despite the 20-year age gap between them,” he said. Choi is 60 years old, and the friendly terms despite a two-decade age difference can indicate an intimate relationship, according to reports. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but like the Anthony Weiner mess causing ripples in the US Presidential election, the tablet found in the trash by cable news channel JTBC that contained the edited Presidential speeches may have belonged to Ko. If so this means that Ko may have been privy to classified information without a security clearance. What a mess.
It looks like the usual suspects from the Korean left such as the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions has given up protesting the THAAD deployment and moved on to the Choi Soon-shil issue that seems to have more traction with the Korean public:
Thousands of citizens took to the streets in downtown Seoul on Saturday, demanding President Park Geun-hye step down, in protest of an ongoing influence-peddling scandal surrounding her confidante.
Groups, including the country’s largest umbrella labor union, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), which had been at odds with the president on a host of issues in the past, jointly held a candlelight rally in Cheonggye Stream Square.
About 20,000 took part in the demonstration, according to the organizers, although the police put the number closer at 9,000, with 8,000 officers mobilized to deal with contingencies.
Police and politicians have been casting watchful eyes on the rally as it was the first mass movement after the president apologized in a nationally televised address over allegations raised against her confidante, Choi Soon-sil.
In the apology delivered Tuesday, Park admitted to the leak of dozens of presidential speeches to Choi before they were made public, acknowledging her ties.
Still, the scandal has only been snowballing as a series of media reports claimed Choi’s possible intervention in other state affairs, including some related to sensitive policy issues. Choi holds no governmental post.
A 24-year-old college student, who asked not to be named, said he joined a demonstration as he was “so frustrated and disappointed” about the latest scandal.
Others like Chris from Australia who works as an English teacher here said it seemed very meaningful that the public came out to send a message to the government. He asked for his last name not to be used for privacy reasons. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but the Australian quoted in the article may want to stay out of Korean political affairs because foreigners have been deported before in the past for this.
President Park’s long-time friend, Choi Soon-shil who is at the center of the current political influence scandal in South Korea has spoken out about the issue from a hotel in Germany:
Choi, who has known the president for some 40 years, is the fifth daughter of Park’s late mentor Choi Tae-min, a leader of a questionable religious group who died in 1994. Observers said Park developed a friendship with the Choi family after her mother and then-first lady Yook Young-soo was assassinated in 1974.
The South Korean public has been casting watchful eyes on the scandal, with some even claiming that the case may have a religious connection, although Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn ruled out such assumptions. Choi’s father reportedly founded a religion in the 1970s that combined Buddhist, Christian and indigenous faith practices.
“Choi is ready to receive punishment if investigations reveal any lawbreaking activities,” he said, adding Choi has no intention to flee or hide.
She, however, asked for “mercy” concerning her daughter through the lawyer. She earlier said in the interview that she traveled overseas to “protect” the daughter, who is also embroiled in controversy on speculations that she was unfairly accepted to Seoul-based Ewha Womans University. Some of the university’s students argued that Choi’s daughter received relatively higher grades compared to her actual achievements.
The emotionally appealing remark by Choi’s legal representatives came amid mounting anger among the South Korean public.
Reflecting the sentiment, local pollster Gallup Korea said Friday that Park’s approval rating was at 17 percent from Tuesday to Thursday this week, marking an 8 percentage point drop from a seven-day period earlier. It marks the lowest rating since she took office and a decrease for the sixth consecutive week.
A whopping 74 percent of the respondents were negative about Park’s achievements in state affairs, soaring 10 percentage points on-week. [Yonhap]
You can read the rest at the link, but it looks like President Park is continuing the trend of South Korean presidents entering office with high approval ratings and then leaving office with incredibly low ratings.
President Park may have her own Hillary Clinton like email scandal on her hands if in fact she was sending secret information over unsecure email to her friend to review to help prepare Presidential speeches. President Park’s non-profit group just like the Clinton Foundation is also accused of strong arming corporations for money:
The broadcaster said it obtained the computer by searching through things discarded from Choi’s office after she left the country in the wake of a series of corruption and power abuse allegations. Choi is accused of creating nonprofit foundations to benefit President Park after she leaves office, strong-arming conglomerates to make massive donations to them and personally siphoning off money from them.
Choi is a daughter of Park’s former mentor, the late Choi Tae-min. Following JTBC’s Monday report on her editing of the president’s speeches, Park admitted Tuesday that she sought help from her longtime friend to write speeches and public addresses and issued a public apology. Choi, however, seems to have exerted much more power over the president than ever conceived of before – possibly to an unprecedented extent.
According to the JBTC’s Monday report, a file entitled “Blue House meeting” was saved at 4:56 a.m. on Dec. 28, 2012. The eight-page document laid out a scenario for Park, who was then the president-elect, ahead of her meeting to President Lee Myung-bak. The meeting took place 10 hours later.
In a section of the file marked “Foreign affairs and national security issues,” Park was directed to ask Lee a question: “In order to prevent the North’s additional provocations, I believe inter-Korean dialogue is necessary in addition to international cooperation. What contacts have made between the two Koreas?”
Underneath the question, a line read: “The military had three secret contacts with the North’s National Defense Commission recently.”
Talks between Seoul and Pyongyang formally ceased after the North’s sinking of the warship Cheonan in April 2010. It was confidential information that the South Korean military and the North Korean National Defense Commission had secret contacts in 2012. The document suggests that Choi had access to a national security secret. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
This seems to be much to do about nothing and simply partisan politics:
President Park Geun-hye on Tuesday apologized to the nation over a leak of dozens of presidential speeches to an acqaintance who has been at the center of an escalating corruption scandal that has roiled politics over the past month.
“Regardless of the reasons involved, I am sorry that (the scandal) has caused national concerns,” she said. “I deeply apologize to the people.”
Park’s apology came a day after local broadcaster JTBC revealed that Choi Soon-sil had received dozens of presidential speeches, including Park’s election campaign remarks, before they were delivered by the president.
The broadcaster said it found the speeches from about 200 files obtained from a computer that was left to be thrown away in Choi’s office in southern Seoul. Among the speeches was Park’s so-called Dresden address on reunification delivered in Germany in March 2014.
The president acknowledged that Choi had helped her prepare for public speeches during her presidential election campaign and the early part of her presidency.
“During the last presidential election campaign, she (Choi) has offered me personal comments about my campaign activities, mostly speeches and publicity efforts,” Park said.
“For some period of time after my inauguration, I had asked for her opinion over some materials, but after the secretarial staff at Cheong Wa Dae was fully established, I stopped (asking for her help).” [Yonhap]
You can read the rest at the link, but Park’s political opposition wants her cabinet ministers who gave Choi the speeches to resign and possibly face prosecution. According to the legal experts quoted in the article the speeches were drafts and thus not official Presidential correspondence thus no legal ramifications.
I wonder if in the US there are any legal ramifications for giving the text of a Presidential speech to someone to look at before it is given?
