Do Je-hae edits news stories as part of the AI team.
New book highlights Park's shortcomings
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Rep. Park Young-sun
By Do Je-hae
The book cover of “Who are the Leaders?”
By Do Je-hae
Rep. Park Young-sun of the New Politics Alliance for Democracy (NPAD) interviewed many political stalwarts during her 20-year career as a broadcast journalist with MBC which started in 1982.
She collected lessons in leadership from those encounters, which she has written about in her new book “Who Are the Leaders?” released in bookstores last week.
The former floor leader of the main opposition party recounts her meetings with former and incumbent presidents and several presidential hopefuls.
The most intriguing segment is on her conversations with the incumbent President Park Geun-hye.
President Park’s dark personal journey, marked by the assassinations of her parents in the 1970s and ensuing years of seclusion, has often been cited as the source of her inability to connect with the public.
“I sincerely hope for the success of the nation’s first female President,” Rep. Park wrote in the book. “But I fear that the current president does not fully understand what the people need.”
Park recently distanced herself even more in instigating a political feud with former floor leader Rep. Yoo Seong-min, openly calling him a “traitor” and triggering a move by her supporters in the ruling Saenuri Party to oust him.
Park has been known to have an aversion to “betrayers” that stems from witnessing her father's loyalists turn their backs on him.
Rep. Park said that such experience has limited Park’s ability to display magnanimity toward her opponents. “She seems to feel betrayal more deeply and strongly than other people,” Rep. Park said.
The third-term lawmaker urged Park to exercise a more tolerant leadership now that she holds the country’s highest elected office.
During a Cabinet meeting last month, Park criticized former ruling whip Yoo Seong-min for immersing in the “politics of betrayal,” accusing him of pursuing his own political interests while disregarding her major policy initiatives.
The first female opposition floor leader has interviewed the President three times, first in 1994 on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of her mother and former first lady Yuk Young-soo’s assassination in 1974 by Mun Se-gwang, a North Korean sympathizer based in Japan.
The book also contains parts of her interviews with former presidents Lee Myung-bak and the late Roh Moo-hyun.
She also talks about her conversations with Rep. Moon Jae-in, the NPAD Chairman who lost a close race to Park in the 2012 presidential election; and Rep. Ahn Cheol-soo, a former co-chairman of the NPAD; Chung Dong-young, a former presidential candidate who served as unification minister for Roh; and Chung Mong-joon, a business tycoon, politician and Korea’s most visible football diplomat.
“I tried to shed light on the pros and cons of political leadership from an objective point of view, based on my experiences as a journalist and politician,” Park said.
“I hope the book will help readers build insight about proper political leadership.”
A former star TV reporter, Rep. Park made great strides as a female journalist before entering politics in 2004. She was MBC’s first female business editor.
The book contains her thoughts on some of the foreign leaders she met, including former South African President Nelson Mandela, Boris Yeltsin, the first President of the Russian Federation, and Chinese President Xi Jinping.