Abe analogy irritates President
Rep. Hong Ik-pyo of the main opposition Democratic Party is surrounded by reporters asking about his remarks concerning President Park Geun-hye and her father, the late former President Park Chung-hee, at the National Assembly in Seoul, Friday. The ruling Saenuri Party boycotted the parliamentary schedule, and demanded an apology from Hong and the opposition party. / Yonhap
By Kim Tae-gyu
An opposition lawmaker used a nebulous phrase from a progressive book, Friday, calling President Park Geun-hye and her father Park Chung-hee “people who should not have been born.”
The comment angered Cheong Wa Dae, and the ruling Saenuri Party, which canceled its parliamentary schedule and demanded an apology from the main opposition Democratic Party (DP) leader Kim Han-gil.
Rep. Hong Ik-pyo of the DP, who made the derogatory remarks, is a first-term lawmaker with knowledge of North Korean affairs after serving as aide for then Unification Minister Lee Jae-jeong under the late President Roh Moo-hyun.
He went on to compare the two Parks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his maternal grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, a prime minister during the Japanese colonial era.
“The comments deny the legitimacy of the President. It amounts to a direct defiance of liberal democracy. He has to apologize to the people and the President,” Park’s senior press secretary Lee Jung-hyun told reporters.
“Hong’s words prompt us to suspect his qualifications as an Assemblyman. They were simply reckless, and I cannot believe they came from a lawmaker who represents the people.”
Unusually enraged, Lee asked whether Hong’s verbal abuse was the official view of the DP.
“Without being satisfied with North Korean style abuse of the President, does our lawmaker want to join efforts to undermine the country’s pride and defile the people?” he asked.
Presidential spokeswoman Kim Haing also lashed out at Hong right after the 45-year-old lawmaker made the remarks.
Hong offered to quit the job of spokesman within the party, taking responsibility for causing public concern.
Hong dubbed both Park and Abe as offspring of “gwitae,” meaning that the two politicians were “babies born to ghosts.”
He quoted the phrase from a book on Park Chung-hee who took the power via a coup and imposed dictatorial rule for some two decades; and former Japanese Prime Minister Kishi, who was convicted as a Class-A war criminal.
The spokesman for the DP floor leader also said Park ― like Abe ― was trying to negate history and return to the past.
As criticism sprang up over his words, Hong said that he just quoted a phrase from a book and regretted that it was understood as a personal attack against the President. He then, offered to resign from his position.
“If you read through the book, you would be able to grasp what I wanted to mean. With gwitae, I attempted to warn of a political system based on overly centralized government control,” he said.
“The book said that such a system took a firm root in Korea because of Park Chung-hee. I wanted to criticize the system.”
After minutes of a summit between former President Roh and the Late North Korean leader Kim Jong-il were disclosed by the National Intelligence Service, speculation has abounded that Roh offered to negate the Northern Limit Line (NLL), the de facto inter-Korean border in the West Sea, which Pyongyang has never accepted.
Analysts point out that Hong might have uses the controversial expressions in anger over criticism by the Saenuri Party regarding the NLL controversy, as he was a member of the team that prepared the 2007 summit.
To put an end to the controversy, the ruling and opposition parties agree to peruse the original minutes of the summit kept by the National Archives of Korea.
The procedure was supposed to start Friday, but Hong’s remarks prodded the governing party to cancel the joint scrutiny of the transcripts.