Fiction writer decodes mystery about president's 7-hour whereabouts

Kim Jin-myung

By Kang Hyun-kyung

President Park Geun-hye's seven-hour whereabouts during the sinking of the passenger ferry Sewol on April 16, 2014, has remained a mystery, despite the passage of two and half years after the tragedy.

The maritime disaster claimed the lives of 304 people, including mostly high school students on an excursion to the southern resort island of Jeju.

Rumors about the president are still rampant as Park and Cheong Wa Dae remained silent about what she did during the golden hours for search and rescue operations of the hundreds of people on board the ship.

Kim Jin-myung, author of "The Rose of Sharon Blooms Again" which has sold over four million copies, suggested four possibilities regarding the mystery about Park's seven-hour whereabouts that day.

Kim speculated that plastic surgery is one of the four scenarios one could possibly think of regarding Park's disappearance from the public eye during the day.

"One of the possibilities we could think of is that she may have had a facial condition which was so bad that she felt it was inappropriate to show up in public," the writer said in a recent TV show.

"The second possibility is that President Park might have been in a deep sleep or remained unconscious for some reason and so she couldn't wake up earlier to attend the meeting with her staff. Or she could have been at a religious ritual in which she was so focused that she didn't want to be bothered by anyone and so she cut herself off from outside disturbances."

Kim said the last possible scenario is that the president was not interested in what happened because she was unaware of the significance of the incident, noting this is the worst-case and most fearful scenario one could think of.

On Sunday, the presidential office said Park was working in her office at her residence in Cheong Wa Dae during the seven hours she was not shown in public, denying the rumors about plastic surgery or a religious ritual.

Kim is the first fiction writer who mentioned President Park's relationship with the late Choi Tae-min, father of Choi Soon-sil who is mired in the corruption scandals rocking the nation today, in his book "Kingmaker."

In the book about the 2007 presidential race, Kim mentioned real names of key politicians who were vying for the top job. Park, who was then a presidential hopeful competing with her rival Lee Myung-bak to become a presidential candidate of the ruling party, was described as having an affair with Choi and had a baby born in their relationship.

Kim said it is a fiction based on his decades of research and literary imagination. The late Choi was a controversial man who assembled a considerable fortune by allegedly taking advantage of his ties with Park, who is the daughter of President Park Chung-hee. He identified himself as a pastor but his religious affiliation remained a mystery as he was a Buddhist monk and founded his own religious cult later.

President Park's seven-hour whereabouts during the sinking of the ferry has resurfaced as a political football following the outbreak of the Choi Soon-sil scandal. Choi was reportedly deeply involved in state affairs and took advantage of her ties with the president for her own business.

According to the presidential office, Park was first briefed about the maritime incident at 10 a.m. on April 16, 2014, and received two more briefings before 10:30 a.m. when she directed the now-defunct Coast Guard to use all possible means to search and rescue the hundreds of lives.

Cheong Wa Dae said a total of 21 briefings — both verbal and written — were made for the president to keep her updated about the maritime disaster before she was finally seen in public at 5: 15 p.m. at a meeting at the National Disaster and Safety Status Control Tower that day.

Wearing a yellow jacket, she abruptly asked of the vice public safety minister, "I understand that the missing students on board wore safety jackets. So why is it so difficult (for the Coast Guard) to find and save them in the water?"

The vice minister answered that those students were locked in the sunken ship so whether those students were wearing safety jackets or not didn't matter in the Coast Guard's search and rescue efforts.

By her remarks, President Park indicated that she didn't fully understand what was happening that day.

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