ed Cleanup of mess
Blue House must reveal everything, fix operating system
After President Park Geun-hye apologized for her main spokesman’s alleged sexual assault in the United States, public uproar has somewhat subsided. Cheong Wa Dae has asked the Washington police to expedite the investigation into the case of Yoon Chang-jung, and will soon formally dismiss him.
We hope the Blue House will not think it has done everything on its part with these measures. The anxiety of Park and her aides to get out of this embarrassing mess as early as possible is understandable. But that is not the way to wrap up this deplorable incident, not just in terms of soothing angry public sentiment but for its own future operation.
Above all, the public is still in a hazy fog about everything. Despite a flood of speculative stories based on piecemeal testimonies, people do not know exactly how Yoon abused the female intern assigned to him, or how other officials from the presidential office, the Korean Embassy in Washington and its cultural center tried to cover up and/or play down the events.
These facts are important not to gratify cheap curiosity but to meet the public’s right to know and, more importantly, to draw lessons from how they handled ― and mishandled ― the unforeseen incident.
As to what happened between Yoon and his Korean-American assistant, Korea can do little except wait for the U.S. investigation to finish. As far as how Korean officials dealt with the alleged sexual assault is concerned, however, Cheong Wa Dae might, and should, have completed its own investigations. It defies our understanding in this regard why Korean officials have also left the investigation of the cover-up to the Washington police, if what its ambassador, Choi Young-jin, said is true.
Park must tell her aides to leave no suspicions about the scandal, make them public, however shameful the details may be, and punish all who are even slightly responsible.
The chief executive is also under fire for pushing ahead with naming Yoon, the controversial former journalist for his ideological extremism and rough words, as her chief mouthpiece. Such blame, if overstretched, could be unfair, because no bosses can know about their staff’s most private matters. Nor does the scandal need to be regarded as “national humiliation,” at least no more than former U.S. President Clinton’s affair with a White House intern and Strauss-Khan’s rape of a hotel maid did not compromise the reputations of their countries much. It was mostly a personal wrongdoing.
But there are key lessons for Park if only she would learn. Most of all, she must appoint aides, starting with the next spokesman, after first considering their personality, ability and personal proximity ― and in that order. The president’s criteria in selecting people seem to have been based on exactly the opposite order so far.
No less important is, once again, good communication between the nation’s first female leader and her aides. That Park learned about the disgraceful incidents even later than some TV watchers says too many things about Cheong Wa Dae’s operational system. It’s dreadful to think of what would happen if such miscommunication and non-communication apply to a grave crisis.
Any crisis can turn into an opportunity, but that depends on how one uses it.