ed Another scandal passes
Probe on ‘memo-gate’ reaffirms justice has died here
The prosecution’s investigation into an illegal campaign donation scandal ended in a most anticlimactic way Thursday, exonerating all people close to President Park Geun-hye. Such a finale disappointed many Koreans, but surprised few. People who have watched the nation’s politics for a while could anticipate this result when the probe started. What they cannot predict is the fate of legal and moral justice in this country.
Of the eight politicians on the bribery list of a businessman who killed himself, the prosecutors indicted only two, including a former prime minister, while dropping cases against six others. It must have been no coincidence that the six were current and former confidants of President Park, and the other two belonged to the “non-Park” camp.
Prosecutors said they could not find incriminating evidence now that the informant was dead. More correctly, however, it should be said law enforcement officers did not try to find evidence; they neither raided the offices of the “pro-Park” suspects nor traced their bank accounts.
Instead of summonsing these officials, prosecutors resorted to a document investigation, asking them, “Why do you think you are on the bribery list?” All suspects answered, “No idea at all.” If this is not a political black comedy, we do not know what is.
President Park, who had sent a “virtual” investigation guideline to that effect at a Cabinet meeting, also managed to move the focus of probe from illegal campaign funding to who got the businessman out of prison by giving him special pardons, successfully shifting the blame to former President Roh Moo-hyun.
It was not the first time Park escaped from crisis by passing the buck to others. When intelligence agents were known to be involved in the 2012 election to help then ruling party candidate Park, the state spy agency revealed the classified records of the second inter-Korean summit and turned popular attention to national security issues. When 304 people were killed by a ferry’s sinking last year, Park and her Cheong Wa Dae pointed their fingers at the operator of the ill-fated ship, hiding the government’s glaring failure during the rescue operation. Even after the Park administration failed to keep Middle East Respiratory Syndrome from landing and spreading here, the most prominent person who apologized for it was not the President but the heir of the Samsung Group for his hospitals’ poor handling of the epidemic.
It seems increasingly clear President Park is a seasoned political tactician but not a good leader who should govern through good communication and compromise. The self-righteous leader wants to rule in unilateral ways but never takes responsibility when things go wrong, passing the buck to political opponents and people she appointed. To paraphrase former U.S. President Harry S. Truman, “The buck never stops at Park.”
The campaign donation scandal, called “memo-gate,” was itself the result of Cheong Wa Dae’s scheme to win hegemony within the ruling camp by pressuring the followers of Park’s immediate predecessor, former President Lee Myung-bak, a political maneuver that backfired in an unexpected way. Koreans can ill afford to see their leaders mired in partisan and factional power plays at a time when the nation faces numerous problems at home and abroad.
Opinion polls show 84 percent of Koreans believe the dead briber’s allegations are right, and 60 percent think an independent counsel should reinvestigate the scandal. President Park and her party will never accept it, at least not in the way people want.
That means two more gloomy consequences: a prolonged administrative impasse amid tedious political wrangling, and a sense of abandonment among Koreans about political and judicial justice in this country.