President's apology: is it necessary or fair?

By Choi Yearn-hong

President Park Geun-hae made an apology to the nation for her spokesman’s sexual harassment of an intern during her historic visit to Washington in early May. The opposition party and the public demanded that she apologize for her staff’s misconduct with the intern at the Korea Embassy in the United States. This seems to me beyond President Park’s control. Yoon Chang-jung, her spokesman, should be solely responsible for his behavior.

There are clearly cultural differences between the powers associated with presidents in Korea and in the United States: there are different expectations of them. Imagine that the president’s spokesman was involved in a sex scandal. Should his boss, the president, make an apology? Would it be fair? The American people might say, No. But the Korean people definitely, Yes. My question to the Korean opposition party and the public: Is it fair to the president? Yoon’s behavior should not be the focus of presidential politics. So a presidential apology should not be demanded by the opposition party or the public. President Bill Clinton was ashamed of his sexual involvement with an intern in the White House, but he remained in office until his term expired.

He apologized. His wife, Hillary Clinton, made it clear that the president, her husband, was not a saint. The American voters voted for the president, not for the saint. Sex scandals attract yellow journalism, but parts of the Korean media with decent reputations are also demanding or expecting a presidential apology.

Assume you are the president and your spokesman is involved in a sexual scandal. Do you think you are responsible for his or her behavior? I don’t think so.

The president selected her spokesman for his communication skills, not for his moral conduct. Needless to say, she could have chosen her spokesman on the basis of both his moral and professional standards. Unfortunately, she could not know and did not see his sexual behavior. She has already admitted that the information available for background checks on her cabinet members and high-level government officials was very limited for her final selection. This is and can be a limit to all presidents in the present and in the future. No one thoroughly knows about his or her friends. No one is God.

Everyone should be fair to one other. The opposition party, the public and the media should be fair to the president and to other parties, other members of the public and other media.

Whether proven guilty or not, Yoon’s misconduct forced him to be fired from his Blue House role. Who fired him, why and when are not important questions to me. How did Yoon get a business class airline ticket on the way back to Seoul is not an important question. Under the circumstances, he should be out of the presidential staff, whether he is fired or resigns. He was already a disgrace to the president and to the Korean people. The Korean Embassy provided a one way ticket to Seoul. All arrangements for his lonely trip back to Korea were properly done. Why have so many people made an issue out of no issue? This is my question. Yoon might pay back the airfare to the Korean government.

The opposition party has tried to humiliate the president and her achievements during her first trip to the United States as a newly elected president. These two things should be separate. Now, is President Park morally responsible for her choice? My answer is no.

As a long-time professor of public policy and administration, I defended public personnel management blamed for spoiling the system; my grounds for defense were fairness and the limited information available of the behavior of governmental employees. I did see that many college professors were chosen for their personal skills and relationships beyond the merit system boundary. Assume that I know a candidate for an opening position in my department personally and professionally. Then, I will choose him over other candidates for the position, because I know him better or more than other candidates.

Someone could attack me for my “spoils system,” but I could defend my decision, because he could be equally capable of performing the job as other candidates plus something he has already proven to me. That choice is more reasonable than the other way around. Patronage and perversion have been easy anti-bureaucratic slogans used by many senseless scholars and commentators on public personnel management, but these are still social and political phenomena before they are bureaucratic phenomena.

I want to praise Park’s splendid speech at the U.S. Congress in which she proposed a Northeast Asian Peace and Cooperation Initiative. She took advantage of a powerful audience in Washington to promote her ambitious vision of a grand dialogue among nations in East Asia, but said that Japan must first apologize for its wartime wrongdoings. Conflicts in East Asia could be much more dangerous than anything happening in the Middle East. The Senkaku Islands and the Dokdo Islets may lead to a real war growing from rhetorical wars between and among China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. Apart from the potential loss of life, it would be a huge threat to the world economy, and it would pit the United States directly against China. Petty disputes over a few uninhabited rocks in the East China Sea and the East Sea are causing a serious and possibly dangerous rift among the four nations. China has recently sent naval ships close to the islands, as well as military aircraft. Japan responded by scrambling F-15s. And the United States, still a major military power in the region (though, if China has its way, not for very much longer), is urging the two parties to remain calm, while voicing its continuing support for Japanese administration over the territory. Park’s proposal deserves a great praise from two or three super powers.

South Korea’s role in East Asia should be vital for peace and stability in Asia and the world. The South Korean opposition parties and the public should be enlightened by President Park’s first visit to the United States and should provide a guide to her next trips to China and Japan. Please forget Yoon’s sex scandal which yellow journalism has dwelt on too long for already.

The author is a retired college professor after a long teaching career in the U.S. and Korea. He now resides in the Washington area.