It’s quite rare for a member of the presidential transition team to quit after serving fewer than 10 days. Rarer still is that no one, except for a select few, seems to know why, causing all kinds of rumors and speculation about possible reasons. But that’s what’s happening within the don’t-ask-don’t-tell transition team of President-elect Park Geun-hye.
Choi Dae-seok, one of the most important members in the foreign policy-national security division of Park’s takeover team, abruptly offered to resign Friday ``for personal reasons,” which is a political euphemism meaning “for reasons one can’t reveal.”
A teary-eyed Choi, the main architect of Park’s North Korea policy based on building inter-Korean trust, said, ``There are complicated situations. I have done little wrong but have decided to take the responsibility. But it is not due to my personal irregularity.”
The president-elect, known for her unwavering trust in long-time confidants, rather swiftly accepted the resignation of Choi, whom she once considered appointing as her unification minister. What happened within the narrow, tightly-closed circle of Park and her aides? More importantly, don’t voters deserve to know the reasons why Park replaced one of the key players who would have had a place in her first Cabinet?
Park’s controversial spokesman, Yoon Chang-jung, apparently doesn’t think so. Refusing to reveal the cause of Choi’s sudden step down, Yoon said, ``No one should suffer damage because of personnel management problems in a democratic country.” If Yoon’s sophism, rooted in his ignorance or distortion of genuine democracy, reflects his boss’s mind even in the remotest way, Koreans will need to seriously think about the state of their nation’s democracy over the next five years.
And if Choi’s retreat is due to his defeat in the fight over policy-making initiatives with inter-Korean hawks within Park’s camp, as some analysts think, people will have to worry about the relationship between the two Koreas throughout Park’s tenure. ``If Choi’s drop from the diplomacy-security team is final, we can expect little from the incoming administration’s North Korea policy,” said Prof. Moon Jung-in of Yonsei University, himself an inter-Korean dove. Other experts agree that Choi is the only one who sets Park’s diplomacy-security team apart from her predecessor’s.
The presumed shift from dialogue to defense is feared to result in another Korea-U.S. ``mismatch” in North Korea policies, as in the differing approaches adopted by liberal Bill Clinton and conservative Kim Young-sam, and conservative George W. Bush and liberal Kim Dae-jung. Barack Obama has nominated supporters of dialogue with rogue states to top diplomatic and defense posts.
Of course Seoul should take the lead in inter-Korean affairs. However, this still requires endorsement, or at least cooperation, from Washington. Park will need to match her own team with Obama’s.
Which explains why people will pay keen attention to whom she appoints as Choi’s successor.