Rep. Park Geun-hye |
By Oh Young-jin
Staff Reporter
It was not the first time and, in all unfortunate likelihood, it won't be the last.
But one thing Rep. Park Geun-hye has shown in dealing with a threat that came three years after suffering from an act of terror is her calmness.
It's anybody's guess whether Park's calmness derives from her tragic history of losing both her parents to assassins. Her father, the late President Park Chung-hee, was killed in 1979 by a subordinate who fell out of favor. Her mother was killed by a North Korea-controlled hit man, taking a bullet that was meant for her husband during the televised broadcast of a ceremony to mark the nation's Aug. 15 Liberation Day in 1974.
"Rep. Park is telling us to be calm," said Rep. Yoo Jeong-bok, who served as Park's chief of staff when she was chairwoman of the ruling Grand National Party, adding that she asked him to report the case to the police. Other sources close to Park said that the threat letter not only targeted Park but also her residence in Samseong-dong, southern Seoul.
According to police, the letter was postmarked Nov. 10 at one of the big mail sorting offices located in Gwanghwamun in Seoul. The letter was sent after Park expressed her opposition to President Lee Myung-bak's plan to revise the Sejong City project, which was created by the previous administration with the goal of redistributing government offices in order to ease the population concentration around Seoul.
Park said, whether one liked it or not, the project was a promise the government made to the people with the endorsement of the then opposition GNP. "I am opposed to the change of plan," she has repeatedly said since.
Police said that the letter read, in part, "I will throw chloride acid on your face unless you change your mind on Sejong City." It also contained a warning, "Don't take it lightly."
The letter also referred to an attack on Park that occured while she was campaigning for the party ahead of local elections in 2006. A man jumped on her at the podium and slashed her face with a knife, forcing her to spend days in hospital. She was quoted as saying in her hospital bed, "What's happening in Daejeon?" The city was considered a key electoral battlefield.
Lawmakers in Park's faction say that the letter illustrated how divisive President Lee's policy on Sejong has become. "It's simply worrisome," one lawmaker was quoted as saying.
Regarding the Sejong project, Park, in a way, is caught between a rock and a hard place.
Park was the party's chairwoman when the GNP gave its reluctant endorsement to the ruling Uri Party in its attempt to move parts of the government's functions to an administrative capital south of Seoul. Apparently, Park not only thinks it is a matter of principle but also that any step backward can undermine her chances in the next presidential election.
She is considered an early favorite to become the GNP's standard bearer. According to pundits, it is important for her to keep her image untainted in order to fight off criticism for being the daughter of a dictator, when the campaign for the 2012 presidential election begins.
Meanwhile, Seoul's Jongno Police Station is in charge of investigating the case. Officers say that the letter didn't have a return address and was written on a word processor, making it hard to trace it back to the sender.
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