President Yoon Addresses the Nation on State of Affairs and His Scandals

On November 7, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol gave a live address to the nation from Yongsan, his presidential seat. Before consulting the script, he muttered that he needed some water and took a drink, watched by millions. The atmosphere was heavy, his smiles stilted. It is no secret that Yoon isn’t fond of this sort of engagement, and uncomfortable questions were lying in wait for him.

In the beginning, his tone was solemn and paced:

I believe it’s my obligation to look after our people’s livelihoods, 24 hours a day, for 365 days a year. My efforts aside, I’ve worried my people. Things I started for the future of the Republic of Korea have inconvenienced you, and affairs surrounding me have troubled you. Presidency is not for making excuses. Everything is my fault and the result of my shortcomings. I extend my sincerest apology before I start this national briefing.

He then got up from the sitting podium, buttoned his suit jacket, faced the reporters and the cameras, and bowed.

Although Yoon said he had already decided to hold this televised address every three months, following advice from some “influential journalists,” everyone knew he had no choice but to face the public.

In the aftermath of the April general elections, where the opposition parties gained an even bigger parliamentary majority, he said he would change. He didn’t. The president continues to stifle calls for justice over the Itaewon tragedy – or any other scandal concerning Yoon’s administration and his friends and family. Top officials who neglected to institute proper safety measures prior to the deadly Itaewon crowd crush were all acquitted. The prosecutor’s office, after years of dallying and obfuscation, eventually decided not to charge Kim Keon-hee, Yoon’s wife, over her involvement in stock manipulation, despite plenty of evidence.

Meanwhile, household debts reached a record high at roughly $1.35 trillion. High living costs won’t come down. The middle class is being hollowed out, with more self-employed people losing their businesses than at the height of the pandemic.

On top of all that, another scandal erupted. Leaked footage and recorded phone conversations have come to light, confirming that Myung Tae-kyun, a businessman with no vested government or party authority, had influenced Kim and the ruling People Power Party (PPP) to determine who received party tickets. Whistleblowing accounts and interviews also revealed that Myung called the shots over designating and developing a government industrial project.

It’s illegal for the South Korean president to meddle in a party’s election rolls. Doing so through a third party, be it a spouse or a fraudster – Myung is renowned for rigging polls – is all the more unacceptable. Based on the information that has come out thus far, a web of quid-pro-quo relations with Kim and Myung as nodal points seems to exist within the PPP. Manipulation of state affairs – there are a lot more examples not covered in this article – for personal gains is grounds for impeachment.

Yet, Yoon seemed jaded at best when asked questions on these matters. Regarding the need to appoint special counsels – since the prosecutor’s office won’t do its job – to investigate the Yoon administration’s cover-up following a marine’s death and the extent of Kim’s involvement in politics and her stock manipulation, Yoon said the legislature’s special counsel bills contravene the constitutional principle of separation of powers.

He lectured the reporters and the public on jurisprudence, insisting that appointment and management of special counsels should be done by the executive – himself. It left everyone wondering as to his conflict of interest, as Yoon had effectively eliminated room for investigating himself and his wife. He dismissed all the attempts at accountability as “political demagoguery.”

When one of the reporters asked if Kim was willing to apologize in public, Yoon defended his wife. To him, she is just the victim of “fake news.” People “demonized her.” She was “aggrieved.” Everything was “overblown.”

Yoon was also asked about his opinion on his abjectly low approval ratings. (At the time, his lowest was 17 percent by Gallup, but he was consistently in the low 20s in others.) He made a casual analogy between his presidential performance and a football player running on the field without minding the scoreboard. It reminded everyone of his past remark that approval ratings didn’t matter to him. It was jarring that the president wouldn’t care what the people think of his government.

The tenor of the event was encapsulated in a single exchange: when Yoon smirked and then frowned at a journalist who confronted him by asking “what a true apology is made of.” One of the most important components, the journalist pointed out, is “to specify and clarify precisely what you are apologizing for.” In Yoon’s case, the journalist continued, “It feels like you are just apologizing for something you believe you don’t have to apologize for just because there is a lot of noise out there.”

Yoon countered that the journalist should specify what he should apologize for. He said that there are a lot of points that people misunderstood, adding, “I can’t read all the articles. There are a lot of things that are not true.”

Following Yoon’s address, public sentiments have further deteriorated. More and more evidence keeps flooding in to corroborate corruption involving Myung. Meanwhile, Yoon’s secretary for political affairs told a National Assembly committee that the journalist who requested the president to specify his apology “was rude,” adding that we “need to fix” journalists’ behaviors. The presidential office came under fire for causing another instance of repressing press freedom.

Since then, tens of thousands of people have poured onto the streets protesting Yoon’s unilateralism and carelessness. A record number of college professors signed declarations demanding Yoon’s resignation – more than during former President Park Geun-hye’s impeachment.

Yoon was forced to stage a national address and bow his head to placate the public. Perhaps he might have been better off not appearing at all.