Confessing my sins as politics reporter

Seo Seung-wook

The author is politics news director of the JoongAng Ilbo.

On Dec. 4, 1997, in my second year as a reporter, the JoongAng Ilbo reported that the Korean government concluded the bailout fund negotiations with the International Monetary Fund. Among the reports was a reporter's column titled "Five major sins, a confession from a reporter on the Finance and Economy Ministry beat," which ran on page 5 that day. It was a big issue inside and outside the company.

A reporter covering the Ministry of Strategy and Economy, the predecessor of the Ministry of Finance and Economy, who had witnessed the humiliating negotiation process, discussed the feeling of self-lamentation as a journalist facing a major national crisis.

He wrote that he had committed the sin of disseminating illusions by delivering the government's propaganda without any screening that the country had become an advanced country after joining the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) a year before.

The second sin, according to the reporter, was simply relaying the government's announcements without any verification. The third sin was ignoring the reality of foreign exchange reserves, which were depleting day by day. The fourth sin, according to the reporter, was not having any alternative, while he concentrated reports only on opposition and criticism. He said his fifth sin was that he had failed to observe the situation closely to discover the possibility that the national economy was collapsing.
At the time, the column had such a big impact that a senior reporter from the politics news department said, "Let the politics news reporters also confess their major sins."

I recalled the column from 26 years ago because of the recent crisis facing our politics. Just like the reporter covering the Finance Ministry at the time, my feeling of self-reproach as a politics reporter is mounting every day. In particular, the absurd scenes that I have witnessed during the National Assembly hearings of the government over the past four days were painful. We've long seen the poor-quality questions from the opposition lawmakers. But the behavior of a minister, who openly sneered at the booing opposition party lawmakers by saying, "Do you think you are at a baseball stadium?" was also unbelievable. The clash between the worst lawmakers and the worst cabinet members summarized the reality of completely destroyed Korean politics.

How did our politics end up like this? Going back, the tragic ending of the Park Geun-hye administration with her impeachment and the Moon Jae-in administration's rampage with his campaign of "eradicating old evils" are in the background. Confrontation and antagonism between factions, the Achilles' heel of our politics, have become more blatant. If we narrow the scope to just the last presidential election, the early return to politics of Lee Jae-myung, leader of the Democratic Party, was decisive. Lee, a defeated presidential candidate marred with various criminal risks, ran in a by-election in a constituency dominated by his party just two months after losing the presidential election. This was not the end of the story. He immediately became the leader of the party. The National Assembly has been reduced to a shameless venue for his protection and survival. And as we all know, there was nothing but extreme confrontation.

Is Lee's party's goal to win the general election? Not at all. Recently, Lee told TJB in an interview, "I won the leadership election with an unprecedented, overwhelming 78 percent, and the support is still growing stronger. My resignation from the party leader post is what the party of the president wants."

If he stays, the support rate of the Democratic Party is destined to remain stagnant. Its prospect for the general elections also becomes bleak. However, the essence of Lee's remarks about his victory with 78 percent is that no matter what happens to the party, all he wants is to maintain the internal hegemony as the pro-Lee faction inside the party grows stronger. Survival of the faction, not a victory, is not much different from the goal of pro-Lee lawmakers and supporters who are raising voices that they need to protect Lee.

The dignity of the government and the president's party also fell. The party is relying heavily on the presidential office. An unexpected slogan of "Ideology-first" and the controversy surrounding the late General Hong Beom-do, as well as the Don Quixote-like behaviors of cabinet members who fought against the National Assembly as if they were warriors are also the result of the "Lee Jae-myung blackhole." If they were competing against a sensible opposition party, not Lee's Democratic Party, would the government and the president's party have dared to act like this?

The pathetic and evil structure, in which you only need to defeat Lee's Democratic Party, is the main culprit and the worst cartel that lowered the standards of Korean politics. The five sins listed by the reporter 26 years ago do feel like my business.