Don’t play favorites

President-elect Lee Myung-bak participated in a Korea University Business School event on Thursday.
It was the second time this month that Lee has appeared at an event held by his alma mater.
He participated in a New Year’s party earlier this month held by the school.
Lee started attending Korea University in 1961, but it doesn’t seem appropriate for him to appear there so often.
In the past, Lee has often been criticized for having too many Korea University graduates around him, particularly when he was mayor of Seoul and then again during his campaign for the presidency.
It became enough of a problem that Lee’s camp said it would be better if they no longer accepted Korea University graduates to work on the campaign.
Lee asked his aides to not to disclose his attendance at the school event to reporters. This shows that he was well aware of the criticism that he favors his schoolmates too much.
It is hard to understand why he still went to the event if he knew it was wrong.
Lee recently said, “I don’t know anything about any strings related to schools, hometowns or relatives. And I have never lived by depending on them.”
If his college friends helped him win the election, he must feel warm toward them.
But there are many people who helped him win.
Rewarding one person after another for one reason after another puts Lee in the old practice of pulling strings.
Already, people are talking about popular initials, such as the new PK or the new KS, to represent the names of regions, schools or the church he attends.
He should remember that there are too many people around him at the moment for them all to have close ties to him.
The people are watching everything the president-elect does these days.
Their expectations are high, so he should be careful not to cause any misunderstandings or create any wrong impressions.
He should not disadvantage the graduates of his alma mater, but he should be more careful not to give them more benefits than others.