The agony of public servants by chance
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KWON HOThe author is a political news reporter of the JoongAng Ilbo. Former President Park Geun-hye stayed in the Blue House from Feb. 25, 2013 to March 12, 2017. There is one official who worked at the Blue House for the entire 1500-day period. He was a competent working-level official during the presidential election, when Park won with a 3.6 percent lead. After the election, his name was never published as a Blue House official. But he worked in silence.
The first and last time he saw Park in person was the day when Park was expelled from the Blue House upon impeachment. “As I shook hands with Park as she left the Blue House, I cried. I barely suppressed the desire to make a big bow. But still, I am not sure whether the feeling was regret or self-blame for not supporting her better,” he said.
He became a public servant by chance. He had worked as an aide to a National Assembly member, tried to make Park the president and devoted himself to the Blue House. The prerequisite for a successful administration is to encourage competent and faithful workers — who became public servants by chance — to work enthusiastically. A governing party insider who has worked for multiple presidents said that such civil servants are the joints connecting bones, adding that a government does not shake when their opinions — sensitive to public opinion — are properly reflected.
A number of such public servants have worked and still work for the Yoon Suk Yeol administration. But I have often seen them sighing in the government. Early in the administration, they were frequently bypassed because the career public servants were especially powerful to the extent of the government “being seized by prosecutors and Finance Ministry officials” — and because they didn’t pass the civil exam and lacked qualifications as civil servants.
With the halfway point of Yoon’s term approaching, those “accidental” public servants are also being criticized. The repertoire of “doorknob aides” and “Ten Attendants” with special connections with the president is repeated. As seen in the term “Hannam-dong Line,” the only difference is that their relationship with the first lady is mentioned.
A governing party insider knowledgeable in the presidential office said, “Some of those accidental public servants abused their power by taking advantage of their personal connections with the presidential couple. As the public decision-making structure is disturbed, the order among those public servants was also broken and fragmentized. With half of Yoon’s term left, who will work faithfully by equating their own fates to the fate of the administration?”
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