Is public's right to know in peril?

By Kang Hyun-kyung

President-elect Park Geun-hye

President-elect Park Geun-hye is running a tight ship, enforcing a gag order on her transition members, which raises the question about whether what the media dubs her “secretiveness” violates the public’s right to know.

A government official said on condition of anonymity that these days he had fun reading newspaper reports that were “made up.”

“As the media has restricted access to the team and their activities, newspapers seem to pick a particular item to cover, order their reporters to attempt to get relevant quotes and write a story based on these,” he said.

“The team members don’t comment much on their questions, but reporters develop stories based on this anyway. I feel like I’m watching the Olympic Games as each paper promotes their own front page story, which is unique.”

This has created confusion among people about where the new government is heading in the absence of information.

The situation is so dire that as some point out that media outlets base their “tomorrow’s” stories on items included in Park’s book of campaign pledges.

In a radio program, Rep. Woo Won-shik of the main opposition Democratic United Party criticized the President-elect and the transition team for what he called their “going it alone” attitude. “It’s like a top-down way of decision-making and no one can be sure that the decisions are right as no system is in place to screen them,” he said.

The lawmaker alleged that such decision-making hearkened back to an authoritarian government.

For that, critics say that Park is running the risk of facing the same criticism she faced during her pre-election days ― ignoring other peoples’ opinions and keeping hers close to her chest.

Already, her transition team is characterized as secretive.

Yoon Chang-jung, the team spokesman, told reporters that the media frenzy regarding its activities produced many unconfirmed stories.

Those stories would turn out to be fictitious, he said. “There will be neither scoops nor reporters who miss untold stories about this transition team.”

Yoon, an ultraconservative commentator, faced calls for resignation by the media and opposition parties when he was appointed as the chief press officer for the team. Park didn’t budge, although she didn’t defend Yoon.

In addition, the President-elect kept the team appointments secret until the last moment, which also invited criticism for being uncommunicative.

However, her way of handling the transition has its share of supporters.

Hong Sung-gul, a professor at Kookmin University in Seoul, said he thinks the team is in heading the right direction regarding its rule to keep a low profile until agreements are made.

“Previously, we saw that some transition team members leaked information which was not fully discussed with the media and this later caused problems,” he said. “Given this, I think it’s fair for the team members to refrain from disclosing what they discussed during closed-door meetings as long as the team is going to give a briefing on the results after they are confirmed.”

Hong went on to say that transition team members are supposed to focus on their job, which is dealing with issues necessary to help Park take over the administration smoothly.