By Yi Whan-woo
President Park Geun-hye went the extra mile Monday to repudiate criticism that she doesn’t listen to others and is hard to communicate with.
The President spent the majority of a 90-minute news conference answering questions from reporters. Cheong Wa Dae also changed the seating arrangement so President Park would look more accessible. In the past she has shown discomfort and often skipped over or minimized Q-and-A sessions.
So far the reaction to these changes has not been entirely positive.
The President showed unswerving confidence in her chief-of-staff Kim Ki-choon, and three Cheong Wa Dae secretaries who faced calls for their resignation for failing to provide proper counsel to Park.
This has made her look aloof from public opinion, making her pitch for economic recovery sound hollow as a result.
“A series of negative assessments on the President is likely to continue this year,” Bae Jong-chan, the chief director at political pollster Research and Research, said in a statement.
Bae speculated that the opposition party is likely to capitalize on such assessments to win parliamentary by-elections slated for April.
The ruling Saenuri Party and the main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy will compete to secure the three National Assembly seats vacated by the former lawmakers of the now-disbanded Unified Progressive Party, a minor, ultra left-wing party.
“Park came up with statistics in explaining her economic drive, and asked politely for public support to fulfill her policies, and seemed to be doing her best to answer the reporters’ questions.
“However, she paid less attention to government reform that the public is most interested in.”
In her 25-minute speech, she mainly stressed the importance of implementing her three-year economic reform plan. This plan was introduced last year to fulfill a creativity-based economic paradigm.
Shin Yul, a political professor at Myongji University, voiced a similar view to Bae.
“The way the press conference was carried out was okay,” he said.
“The meeting, however, did not meet the people’s expectations because she blamed individuals, not Cheong Wa Dae as a whole, for the lack of state management.”
Shin cited the President attributing the leak of Cheong Wa Dae’s internal memoranda last year to two former officials at the country’s most powerful office —Cho Eung-chon and Park Gwan-cheon.
Prosecutors said last week that the duo took the confidential documents and delivered them to the President’s younger brother, Park Ji-man, who was believed to be engaged in a power struggle with Jeong. The documents explained the relationship between Jeong and a group of presidential secretaries.
“It would have been better for her to say that both Cheong Wa Dae and the President herself deserved the blame,” Shin said.