The presidential couple at a crossroads

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The presidential couple at a crossroads

Published: 07 Oct. 2024, 19:49

Lee Ha-kyung
The author is a senior columnist of the JoongAng Ilbo.

More powerful people are more likely to look out for the feelings of the most powerful person because they have more to lose. Thirty years ago, those who met then-President Kim Young-sam had to listen to his chief of staff’s “emergency tips” before their meetings. “If the president falls in a bad mood during your meeting, he will turn his head away and look at the trees outside the window,” the chief of staff said. “Then, you should immediately get up with your documents and leave, after telling him, ‘Mr. President, I will do my best.’”

At the time, the gatekeepers of the president had two or three dinner meetings a day and received bribes each time. Whenever the prosecution raided their homes for corruption scandals, their houses smelled of rotting money. The people who invited them for dinners and gave bribes always asked them, “How does he feel these days?” The president was like an emperor at the time.

But even presidents Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung, who had enjoyed such power, couldn’t avoid the decisions to arrest their sons when they lost public support. What goes around the president today has not changed much from the past. President Yoon Suk Yeol may be clean and selfless, but shady people are surrounding him. A political middleman is undergoing an investigation on charges of taking half of a lawmaker’s salary in return for helping the former five-term lawmaker win a nomination.

A former staffer of the presidential office had requested a reporter of Voice of Seoul, a liberal YouTube channel, to criticize Han Dong-hoon, then acting leader of the governing People Power Party (PPP), shortly before the party’s leadership election. Two days later, the media ran a report, titled “Han’s embezzlement of party funds.” Afterward, the staffer was named an auditor of a government-invested institution, receiving an annual salary of 300 million won ($222,486). What the both men have in common is that they quoted their friendship with the president’s wife, Kim Keon Hee.

The public sentiment is harsh. Even the hardcore conservative supporters cringe at the mention of Kim. Last week, the bill to launch an independent counsel investigation into her scandal was voted down in its second voting, but at least four out of 108 lawmakers of the PPP who had previously voted against it changed their decisions this time.

The majority Democratic Party (DP) has vowed to reintroduce the bill. As opposition parties, including the DP, have 192 seats in total, it would take only a few PPP lawmakers to change their minds to pass the bill with more than 200 votes. PPP lawmakers’ support for Kim is also waning. PPP leader Han, who has been at odds with the presidential office day after day, said, “I won’t say anything in advance,” when asked what he will do if the independent counsel bill is reintroduced for a vote. No one knows what will happen from now on.

The National Assembly’s regular audit on the conservative government, which started on Monday, will become an audit of the first lady. As the statute of limitations for the last parliamentary elections will end in three days, there is no longer any reason for PPP lawmakers to be afraid of the presidential office and the prosecution. If the independent counsel investigation bill is passed, the first lady will be raided — and summoned — for probes on all sorts of charges ranging from her acceptance of a luxury handbag from a suspicious pastor to stock price manipulation and meddling in nominations and appointments. There is no telling when and where a crucial recording or Telegram message will be exposed to become a smoking gun. Yoon will immediately become a lame duck president and the opposition will launch a campaign to impeach him.

The presidential office had tried to assign all of Kim’s confidants into the newly created office for the first lady in the presidential office. According to sources, it was impossible to accommodate all of them because there were too many of them.

Controlling Kim is not easy. A key official close to the administration said, “I have witnessed several instances of Kim humiliating the president in front of senior presidential secretaries.” If that’s true, it raises the possibility of Kim’s influence in appointments and nominations. The PPP, chased by angry public sentiments, can take its own path for political survival. Yoon needs to act preemptively. First, the first lady must apologize in person with sincerity and agree to accept an investigation by a special prosecutor. She must fulfill her promise made before the election that she will only “play the role of a wife.” If she clashes with the rising public sentiment, her scandal could become Yoon’s problems.

Democracy is a difficult thing. “The Social Contract” by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, which become the bible of the French Revolution, rejected the theories of royal authority and laid a strong foundation for modern democratic philosophy. Even Rousseau wrote, “Were there a people of gods, their government would be democratic. So perfect a government is not for men.” Democracy is too much for imperfect humans to handle. Even the United States — which has been promoting the myth of democracy by humanity for more than two centuries — has experienced the illegal occupation of the Capitol by extremists who protested the outcome of a presidential election.

Korean democracy is facing a serious crisis now. The president must make a coolheaded decision. If he doesn’t, the country will fall like a Latin American country. “The Young Ones” by Cliff Richard & The Shadows is a beautiful song celebrating the love of youth, but it also warns us to not forget our finitude. “Cause tomorrow sometimes never comes,” he sings. That’s true. There is no written guarantee that tomorrow will come. The lyrics are a variation on the Roman poet Horatius’s exhortation to “Carpe Diem!” and “Seize the day while it’s in front of you!”

Power is nothing but a dream that disappears in a moment. Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung, perhaps the most powerful politicians in Korea’s modern history, accepted their sons’ arrests during their presidency, saving the country from chaos. They are truly giants who built democracy in this country. We earnestly hope that Yoon will not miss the chance.

Translation by the Korea JoongAng Daily staff.