Apologizing: The language of winners

Lee Jung-min
The author is a columnist of the JoongAng Ilbo.

Former U.S. President Barack Obama offered an apology whenever the need arose. He had the rare knack of overcoming a political crisis by calming the opposition through candid admissions of his own responsibility. The 44th U.S. president is still being remembered for his outstanding leadership based on humility.

In 2013, when confusion and criticism were rampant after the Obamacare website crashed, he immediately apologized in a nationally-televised speech at the White House and promised to fix the problem quickly. Due to his swift response, the Republicans missed the chance to politicize the far-reaching technical glitch. After the Boston Marathon bombing took place the same year, Obama instantly apologized, without blaming his aides or event organizers or shifting the responsibility to them.

The image of the president dealing with hardships through public apologies was quite refreshing at the time, given his predecessors’ reluctance to accept responsibility. Cases where Obama solved problems by directly communicating with victims even appear in business administration textbooks. In October 2015, when 22 doctors and patients were killed or injured by the mistaken bombing of Doctors Without Borders’s field hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, the U.S. president personally called and apologized to its chief for the deadly airstrike, promising a thorough investigation into the case.

As the Democratic presidential candidate in 2008, Sen. Obama sparked a national debate over what is acceptable language between men and women in workplaces. On a campaign trail to Detroit, he made a mistake of calling a female television reporter “sweetie.” Upon realizing his gaffe, he left a voice mail to the reporter. “Hi Peggy. This is Barack Obama. I’m calling to apologize on two fronts. One was you didn’t get your question answered and I apologize. […] Second apology is for using the word ‘sweetie.’ That’s a bad habit of mine. I do it sometimes with all kinds of people. I mean no disrespect and so I am duly chastened on that front. Feel free to call me back. I expect that my press team will be happy to try to make it up to you.”

Any feelings of discomfort instantly turn into a smile upon listening to the message. The power of apology lies in the dramatic shift in the characterization of an offender — from an impolite person to a gentle one.

In the past, the powers that be didn’t apologize. If they did, it would weaken their authority, they thought, as an apology was deemed “the language of losers.” But times have changed. Apologizing has become a virtue required of leaders. If they candidly reveal their own mistakes rather than downplaying or hiding them, it helps consolidate public trust and expedite the process of addressing conflicts or disputes. Apologizing became a crucial tool for leaders to be winners, not losers, in the 21st century.
Apologies also demand skills, as the unconditional “sorry” doesn’t work today. An apology must meet three conditions: recognizing the liability for your wrong action; taking responsibility for the damage you inflicted on others; and moving on to change your actions, according to Prof. Aaron Lazare, chancellor of University of Massachusetts Medical School and author of “On Apology.”

In the twilight of his presidency in 1997, Kim Young-sam suffered a political blow due to his son’s involvement in offering special favors to now-defunct Hanbo Group in return for bribes. The president apologized for his son’s corruption, saying “My son’s flaws are mine, too.” A few days later, his son was sentenced to a prison term for tax evasion charges. Oh In-hwan, public information chief under President Kim, said in a memoir, “The president instructed the prosecution to investigate the suspicion over his son. But after prosecutors failed to find any evidence to back the suspicion, the president raged at them. He said, ‘Could people really understand such dubious investigation results?’ After the son was found to have kept a slush fund in a secret account in a separate case, the president ordered the prosecution to arrest his son immediately.”

Former President Kim Dae-jung was no different. After his two sons served prison terms for corruption, he bowed to the nation and expressed deep regrets about “my sons causing anxiety to the people.” He added, “I have no objection to punishing my sons according to the law.” The president then ordered his aides to devise an effective system “to keep a close watch over my family and other relatives” to prevent any more corruption in the future.

The two former presidents’ apology was convincing, thanks largely to the sincerity of their apology and follow-up actions to back it up, as pointed out by Professor Lazare in his book. Apology is a highly sophisticated act of politics for political leaders.

On April 4, just six days before the April 10 parliamentary elections, members of the governing People Power Party (PPP) increasingly demanded an apology from President Yoon Suk Yeol. Rep. Cho Hae-jin, a third-term lawmaker, demanded the president “kneel and apologize for disappointing and enraging the people with his arrogance and self-righteousness.” He even demanded all Cabinet members resign. After the Rebuilding Korea Party newly launched by former Justice Minister Cho Kuk “to punish the Yoon administration” gained popularity, PPP candidates running in Seoul and Gyeonggi constituencies, in particular, are feeling an acute sense of crisis. Internal schisms further deepened in the PPP after the nearly botched meeting last week between President Yoon and the representative of trainee doctors still on walkouts to protest the government’s “unilateral announcement” of a plan to increase the medical school enrollment quota by 2,000 annually. After a candidate criticized the president for “being detached from public sentiment,” another candidate even demanded the president leave the party.

Looking back, President Yoon made apologies not once, but repeatedly. After the 2022 Itaewon disaster and the massive floods in 2022 and 2023, he apologized. Over Busan’s wildly unsuccessful bid to host the 2030 World Expo, the president attributed it to his “lack of competence.” So why are the people not satisfied with his apology? That’s mostly because they perceive it as “an apology without substance,” even though it could be disheartening to Yoon. He did apologize for the Itaewon tragedy and the botched bid for the Expo, yet his key aides and government officials still keep their posts in his administration.

The controversy over the first lady’s mysterious reception of a luxury handbag from a pastor and the president’s half-baked apology still continues even within the PPP. In February, the president expressed regret about his wife’s decision to “not refuse it coldheartedly.” But it is not clear whether the president accepts his responsibility for the questionable episode or not. His wording also contradicted his statement as a presidential candidate, in which he championed the strict application of the same standards to his family and aides. The broken promise by the first lady to “be devoted to a wife’s role” only fueled public distrust in the sincerity of her promise.

The PPP and the government’s repugnance toward the apology may stem from their trauma of the impeachment of former president Park Geun-hye and her oust from power, as they attribute her fall from grace to her generous admission of her mysterious relationship with her confidante, Choi Soon-sil. But Park’s tragedy did not start with her frank admission of facts and apology. Rather, her misfortune owed more to a lack of her political leadership to find a political solution — just think of all the time she wasted in the lead-up to the apology — in order to prevent the collapse of her administration. The Reuters last week linked the sudden disappearance of the first lady in public events since Dec. 15 to the need for the presidential office to protect the governing party from negative commentaries ahead of the upcoming elections. The government must pay heed to the poignant analysis.

No government is 100 percent perfect. The success of a government largely depends on its leader’s political stewardship — or a cool willingness to accept mistakes and the art of apology to turn a crisis into an opportunity. Timing matters in politics. Now could be the perfect time for the president to deliver a sincere apology for his wife.