President Roh said during an August 31 special TV interview on KBS, the Korea Broadcasting System, regarding the recent game arcade scandal, Sea Story, I would like to ask the Korean people to think that we have a paid hefty tuition fee for the incident and to exercise patience this time and I will come up with strict measures to make sure that these kinds of incidents will never happen again. It was an added remark in such an awkward way, mentioning tuition fee when he apologized to the public for all the trouble.
On that day, President Roh spoke more than 25 A4 pages, much longer than an average short novel during the one-hour interview. Using his typical skills in speech and expression, he implicitly blamed the opposition party, the National Assembly and the media for various failures in policies. He seemed like a lawyer defending various failed policies instead of the chief administrator of national politics. He left some provocative remarks to be added on the list of his other extraordinary comments: Even a good economy could make people suffer; Politics based on a code is an inevitable principle for responsible politics; and Even a president of Korea can be elected on basis of a revolving door appointment. However, how would such incompetent members of the same code conduct responsible politics?
The Sea Story scandal is likely to develop into a corruption documentary of the Republic of Gambling, where the script was written by the current administration with the title of Fostering the Game Industry and the main and supporting roles are played by those surrounding the president, and his strong-arms, some politicians and organized gangsters. In a country with a parliamentary system of government, the cabinet would definitely be responsible for this corruption scandal and resign for sure. Nevertheless, President Roh shrugged it off, telling the public to think of it as a hefty tuition fee. Why did he make such an offensive remark when the public gets nothing by paying the price?
The public has paid a huge price for the past three and a half years because of the administrations ignorance of serving the public. By looking at the attitudes of President Roh on TV toward the public, the pains would continue to hurt the public for the remaining one and a half years, causing more stress and higher social costs. Let alone spending time on introspection for the plummeted support ratings of around 10 percent, the current administration is being audacious as if to make a fool of the public.
Kwon Sun-taek, Editorial Writer, maypole@donga.com