President Park Geun-hye’s (mis)rule started with her religious belief that she can only be right, while everybody else is always wrong.
The major drubbing her governing Saenuri Party took in the recent parliamentary general election obviously failed to shake up her sense of infallibility.
Barring an extreme case, it is very likely that Park will not change and the nation will be stuck with the same rigid, stubborn President for the next two years. Of course, it shouldn’t be ruled out that history may treat her rule better than her contemporaries. As a matter of fact, her paradoxical position on such issues as North Korea may produce better results than her predecessors could.
Park was supposed to use her Tuesday meeting with media editors to show she was mollified by the election results and has a willingness to change her governing style to reflect the popular discontent that was also confirmed by her nose-diving popularity.
She didn’t. On the emergence of the People’s Party as a player in the three-party system that came at the expense of Saenuri’s majority, Park called it the voters’ rejection of the two-party rule as if she had nothing to do with the parliamentary stalemate. “One wheel went this way, while the other went that way,” she told the senior journalists. “The voters showed their dissatisfaction about nothing being done.”
She had tried successfully to remote-control Saenuri affairs, and when it didn’t listen, she didn’t hesitate to chastise any naysayer, be it a party chairman or floor leader. Oftentimes Park looked to be a helicopter mom disciplining her party. Besides, it was public knowledge that she pulled the strings behind the nominating process through proxy, pushing Yoo Seung-min, her former aide she called a “betrayer,” to go out on a limb as an independent.
Park remained relentless, telling the editors that Yoo tried to use her as a marketing tool to promote his election bid. Even Elsa in “Frozen” could hold a candle to Park, also known as the Ice Princess.
Park was her same old self about the state’s monopoly of the history textbook. Saying that history is the soul of the nation and the territory is its body, she repeated that the history textbooks now in use give the North legitimacy and promote unification by its terms. Poll after poll, supported by a majority of experts, shows that she is wrong. The conviction of this level is comparable to paranoia.
Regarding the North, she left no room for second thoughts. If the North explodes another nuclear device or test-fires a long-range missile, it would only hasten its own collapse. In other words, she was sticking to her “take-no-prisoners” approach. However, we believe that Park’s approach may generate better results than her predecessors’ zigzag approach that lacked consistency. But it can’t remove the inherent risks of the North’s suicidal attack or the big powers’ surprise change of mind from the North Korean conundrum.
One thing that we agree with her on is about her observation: “I will have many regrets when I retire.” We hope against hope that as she leaves Cheong Wa Dae, she won’t regret thinking, “If I had only listened then.” For that, she should learn that she can be wrong and that admitting a mistake is not necessarily a show of weakness. It’s better late than never. Or is it?