Park makes clean break from MB

President Park Geun-hye smiles duringa trade and investment meeting at Cheong Wa Dae, Thursday.Park said she wore a red coat to express her passion for boosting the economy. / Yonhap

By Kim Tae-gyu

President Park Geun-hye rarely leaves any room for misunderstanding.

Regarding her relationship with the government led by her predecessor Lee Myung-bak, President Park is so clear that few will be mistaken about her intention to establish a clean break from it, even though the two belong to the ruling Saenuri Party.

Of course Park hasn’t said this but her actions, or lack of them, speak loudly for her.

Won Sei-hoon, the former National Intelligence Service (NIS) head under former President Lee, was arrested Wednesday on charges of accepting bribes worth 150 million won ($132,000) from a contractor in cash and other gifts.

Even though Won is charged with bribery, punishing him has another meaning because it is alleged that he intervened in the presidential election last year by posting comments critical of opposition candidates, political observers pointed out Thursday.

Park has repeatedly said that she had nothing to do with the NIS maneuvering and ordered a thorough investigation into the case which, it is feared, will cause a big headache to the incumbent administration.

“The worst scenario for Park might be that Won’s allegedly unlawful involvement in the presidential election makes a dent in the legitimacy of her government,” Prof. Sohn Tae-gyu at Dankook University said.

“Won’s arrest on charges of bribery, not for violating the Election Law, can reduce such a possibility. It can also help her sever ties with the former administration. The investigation of the four-river project can be looked at from the same perspective.”

The Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) said Wednesday that former President Lee’s iconic project of refurbishing the country’s four major rivers was designed as a prelude to a controversial canal project.

Just after his inauguration in 2008, Lee reversed a pledge to build a canal linking Seoul with the southeastern port city Busan due to public uproar because of its lack of economic viability and negative environmental impacts.

Instead, his government channeled 22.2 trillion won ($19.5 billion) to refurbish the Han, Nakdong, Geum and Yeongsan rivers and develop their surroundings.

However, the state auditor said that Lee’s lieutenants came up with a design for the four-river program so that it could be transformed into the canal project at a later date.

The announcement even angered Cheong Wa Dae — its senior press secretary Lee Jung-hyun branded it as “deceiving the people,” and “a great damage to the country.”

“All the new leaders try to cut ties with their immediate predecessors and what the Park administration is doing can be understood from such a viewpoint,” said Yoon Hee-woong, an official of the Korea Society Opinion Institute.

“History repeats itself. In fact, the late former President Roh Moo-hyun did a similar thing just after he took the office against then outgoing President Kim Dae-jung.”

In 2003, then new President Roh accepted the appointment of an independent counsel to look into the so-called cash-for-summit scandal — secret payments of millions of dollars from the Kim administration to Pyongyang to enable a landmark June 2000 inter-Korean summit.

As Roh was the self-proclaimed successor of Kim’s reconciliatory North Korea strategy, dubbed the “Sunshine Policy,” his unexpected decision caught many by surprise.