Park trying to distance from predecessors

By Kim Tae-gyu

President Park Geun-hye is drawing a distinct line between herself and her predecessors, criticizing problematic practices condoned by prior administrations.

In opening remarks at a weekly Cabinet meeting Tuesday, she opened fire upon previous presidents on their failure to collect unpaid fines from the military general-turned-President Chun Doo-hwan who took power in 1981.

“The issue of the former president’s fines has remained unsettled over the past 10 years by past administrations and the new government is trying to deal with it in an active manner,” Park said.

“It does not make any sense to claim that the new government is liable for all problems. I want to ask what the previous governments have done (about the problems.)”

The Supreme Court ordered Chun, who was in office from 1981 to 1988, to pay a total of 220 billion won ($195 million) to state coffers, the amount that he was estimated to have illegally accumulated.

After paying only a quarter of the overall amount, however, he refused to follow the court order, contending that he was penniless. But he reportedly lives a luxurious life playing golf or travelling.

She also took issue with the structural hitches in operating the nation’s 20-plus nuclear reactors.

“It is a great shock to find irregularities in running nuclear reactors, which date back some time. We will have to find out who is responsible so that wrongdoings will not happen again,” she said.

“The issues like corruption in the nuclear industry were there during the previous administrations too … We are required to delve into the reason why they couldn’t solve them.”

Out of the country’s total 23 nuclear reactors, nine are currently offline as the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission ordered the halt of operations of ones where the use of substandard parts was uncovered.

Fake quality warrants were issued during the construction of half a dozen reactors and this prompted the nuclear safety watchdog to review all the test results for major components in the 23 reactors.

The safety-first measures and the resultant lack of electricity supply are feared to cause blackouts this summer, in particular in mid August when the weather is expected to be especially hot.

Along the same line, the Park administration refused to accept the conventions where senior Seoul bureaucrats had dialogues with Pyongyang officials whose status was inferior to them.

Such a principle led to the rupture of the inter-Korean talks, which were initially supposed to take place today in Seoul.

North Korea said Tuesday that it would send Kang Ji-young, a director at the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea, its entity dealing with cross-border affairs.

Seoul proposed Vice Unification Minister Kim Nan-shik as its chief negotiator. In response, the North demanded that Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae represent the Southern team.

In the past, Kang and Ryoo would happily have met despite the fact that the former is a level or two lower than the latter, but not this time. As a result, the North called off the first senior-level meeting between the two Koreas in six years.