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President Roh Moo-hyun (center) takes a stroll around the grounds of the presidential Blue House on August 30, accompanied by two TV anchors.
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GNP members question motive of apology
"I’d like to offer a sincere apology to the people for the great anxiety they have suffered. I feel deeply sorry," President Roh said in an August 31 interview with the Korean Broadcasting System (KBS), referring to the recent scandal over murky adult video game licensing by the government. "I could have apologized earlier, but I thought that I should be more prudent when offering an apology, and base it on my sense of responsibility for policy failures or faults of my own," the president said.As for his administration’s plan of action, President Roh said that "the government is going to appoint a special team to investigate the truth of the scandal and to set up countermeasures to prevent such a thing from reoccurring," he added. Regarding allegations that he tried to limit the prosecution’s investigation, possibly because of the alleged involvement of his nephew in the scandal, President Roh said that the scandal had "nothing to do with influence-peddling." He added, "There are no guidelines [to the investigation], and the prosecution doesn’t listen to the president any longer. People are mentioning my nephew’s name and even the president can breathe only when he is given permission to explain." Turning to the controversy surrounding the transfer of wartime operational control to the Korean military from the U.S. Forces Korea, Roh blamed the main opposition Grand National Party (GNP), saying, "The transfer of control was planned by Roh Tae-woo of the GNP, and the Participatory Government is just following these plans. The GNP should not object merely for the sake of making an objection." Roh continued, "The Kim Young-sam administration talked about the ’second foundation of the Army’ recovering peacetime operational control in 1994 and it set up a plan to reclaim wartime command by 2000," Roh stressed. "A few conservative dailies that now raise objections to the command transfer praised the Kim administration at that time, saying, ’the wartime command should be transferred as soon as possible.’ And now they have completely changed their position." Rep. Joo Ho-young of the GNP criticized the nature of the president’s apology, saying, "The [gaming] scandal does not merely represent a policy failure. It is a wrongdoing involving influence-peddling. It is natural for the president to apologize [given the situation], but his apology is merely to escape people’s criticism." Park Geun-hye, former chairwoman of the GNP, said, "The wartime operational control issue has nothing to do with independence. Even experts are concerned about the nation’s security. The GNP has never opposed something just for the sake of making an objection."
