단상斷想

Immediately after the 21st presidential election, President Jae-myung Lee was elected, but I still had a vague anxiety about the 'Lee Jae-myung era'. I even made a 'political prediction' that Lee Jae-myung's first 'state administration', who had been persecuted for a long time by Yoon Seok-yeol and the prosecution, might become a bloody revenge.

Our history clearly shows that politicians' feelings when they enter the bathroom are completely different from when they leave once they seize power. When Park Chung-hee was constantly 'scratched' by his political rivals in the name of democracy, he simply created the Yushin Constitution.

Park Chung-hee, who gained lifelong power through the Yushin Constitution, became markedly different from his former self. He used the Korean Central Intelligence Agency to madly suppress opposition figures and crush the people's demands for democratization. However, the moment Park Chung-hee came out of the Yushin, or "toilet," it may have already been destined that he would be assassinated by his closest aides.

Power is like a double-edged sword, and no matter which side you hold, your own hand is bound to bleed. But politicians are so intoxicated by the sword dance of power that they may not even realize they are bleeding. President Lee Jae-myung went to the brink of political death due to the dust-sweeping investigation by the Yoon Seok-yeol prosecution's dictatorial regime. In fact, he was attacked with a weapon in broad daylight and crossed the line of death before returning.

President Jae-myung Lee's statement on an internet broadcast that "politicians last longer if they are elected with difficulty" not only calmly expressed his hardships, but also revealed that he could not reach the position of president without a "narrative of hardship." It was also an 'anecdote'. I vaguely speculated that President Lee had harbored a deep sense of revenge in his heart, thinking, "Once I become president, I won't let them get away with it," in order to be rewarded for his 'dog-like suffering.' That's why the advent of Lee Jae-myung's era looked 불안해 and even fearful.

But when I actually opened the lid, the thought of 'Oh, this isn't it...' gradually solidified into the conviction of 'That's right.' I would like to point out that President Lee Jae-myung has changed in two ways since taking office.

This is because Lee Jae-myung's mindset is so different when he enters and leaves the bathroom that it is very different from my timid expectation that he would perform a gut ritual to remove political enemies and freely appoint his close aides and wield a sword dance of power immediately after winning the presidential election, so I am writing this. And I would also like to write about the expectation that Lee Jae-myung could become the only 'performance- and achievement-oriented president' in history who is the same before and after taking power.

First, let's talk about President Lee Jae-myung's personnel style. When the presidential office announced the appointment of its staff, the person who caught my eye was none other than Ha Jung-woo, the Senior Secretary for AI Future Planning. It was shocking that Lee Jae-myung's government appointed an AI genius with a "Silicon Valley kid" look, who seemed completely out of place with the presidential office emblem, and who was free-spirited and full of curiosity, as the grand planner of AI, the top priority ingredient for the future of Lee Jae-myung's government. On the one hand, it was so refreshing and novel to feel in politics for the first time in a long time, and I felt so favorable that I thought politics could look sophisticated too (I sincerely hope that this expectation does not end as an expectation).

President Lee also nominated Bae Kyung-hoon, head of the LG AI Research Institute, as the next Minister of Science and ICT. Candidate Bae is a technology expert who led the design of LG's hyper-scale artificial intelligence (AI) model 'Exaone'. President Lee has given the two top players, Ha Jung-woo and Bae Kyung-hoon, a platform to 'design the Korean AI industry to their heart's content'. In addition, Han Seong-sook (58), an advisor at Naver, was selected as the Minister of SMEs and Startups, who will promote the development of the private industry sector, including startups.

The appointment of individuals from private companies in President Lee Jae-myung's personnel decisions has a significance beyond simply being interpreted as a pragmatic approach. Lee Jae-myung's personnel style is distinctly different from previous administrations that considered various connections and 'political balance' of bureaucrats or politicians.

Former President Yoon Seok-yeol sparked controversy over expertise by appointing Oh Young-joo, the Second Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, as the Minister of SMEs and Startups. Even now, it is not clear why a foreign affairs expert was 'placed' in the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, the flower of the private industry sector (Oh's spouse, Jang Seok-myeong, former Senior Secretary for Public Discipline at the Blue House, was active in Yoon Seok-yeol's campaign during the 20th presidential election), but this is the decisive difference between Lee Jae-myung's and Yoon Seok-yeol's personnel appointments.

Entrusting the Ministry of the Interior and Safety to a trustworthy 'friend' (Lee Sang-min) and sticking to 'Al-Bakgi' until the end despite numerous controversies, or suddenly moving the Chief of the Presidential Security Service to the Minister of National Defense (Kim Yong-hyun), eventually disguising him as a historical traitor, just seeing that dazzling personnel management and then suddenly encountering Lee Jae-myung's ability and performance-oriented personnel, it's like suddenly coming out into a bright world from a dark world, to the point where I can't see properly ahead.

I don't know why Lee Jae-myung tries to appoint figures like Ha Jung-woo, Bae Kyung-hoon, and Han Seong-sook, whom he barely knows, to important positions. If I were to 'dare' to guess, I would like to understand it as the pure heart of an administrator who wants to deliver achievements and results to the people. I would also like to add a bit of excessive praise called patriotism to it.

In fact, our people have never dared to demand achievements and results from the president. Also, we have never received a table of achievements and results presented by the president until now. Who would dare to rate the president's 'governing act'? Even if the National Assembly grills him for 'underperformance,' it is enough to suppress it with one word, 'the president's highly governing area.' Moreover, while watching a president who doesn't even go to work and doesn't know what he's doing, we couldn't see properly because we were covered by the blindfold of authoritarianism that the president is 'vaguely the highest authority doing something,' and we couldn't 'evaluate' the president.

In this regard, Lee Jae-myung's personnel appointments can be seen as an attempt to propose and practice 'performance-based presidential leadership' to the public for the first time. Of course, it is possible that people from private companies may lack administrative skills or communication skills, and may end up being taken advantage of by bureaucrats and then retire, or they may cause confusion contrary to the President's expectations and step down. However, I am 100 percent sure that it is better than the harm caused by public officials who take public office through the chance of the president's friends or acquaintances, only say things that are meaningless, wander around and waste taxes.

Lee Jae-myung's personnel appointments also demonstrate restraint of power. If he had won the presidential election on his third attempt, he would have wanted to use the people he had cherished or had his eye on all along out of that 'competitive spirit'. Suppressing such greed for people and selecting people solely based on skills and abilities, and even reusing personnel from the past regime, can only be interpreted as a restraint rarely seen in today's powerful figures.

As President Lee Jae-myung only considers ability and competence when appointing people to key positions, the perception of public officials has also changed. President Lee demands a serious sense of responsibility from public officials whenever he has the opportunity. He asks public officials to "work with the mindset that one hour of a public official is the same as one hour of 52 million people, and with a sense of responsibility 52 million times greater."

The eternal truth that 'public officials must suffer for the people to be comfortable' was common sense that did not apply in a twisted world where the people worked their fingers to the bone to earn money and pay taxes for the livelihood and comfortable lives of bureaucrats. President Lee Jae-myung, while serving as the Mayor of Seongnam and the Governor of Gyeonggi Province, despised bureaucrats who ignored the people's complaints and comfortably took the people's salaries like grasshoppers, and is now embarking on a major reform.

President Lee Jae-myung instructed the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries on the 24th to review the completion of the relocation to Busan by the end of December. In particular, it is reported that President Lee ordered to expedite the relocation by renting space instead of building a new building. I would like to cite this decision as the first "state administration" case to which President Lee Jae-myung's "sacrifice of public officials" logic was applied, which came after the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries reported to the National Planning Advisory Committee that it would relocate the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries to Busan by '2029', making all sorts of excuses.

President Lee emphasized a new image of public officials at the State Council meeting he presided over at the presidential office on the 24th. He urged public officials to have a 'peculiar' mindset, citing the example of the fan from Journey to the West. It is the story of how Sun Wukong borrowed the fan to put out a fire, and when he fanned it once, thunder and lightning struck, and when he fanned it twice, a typhoon blew and the world turned upside down.

President Lee said, "Even though the world is undergoing tremendous upheaval with a very small fan, the person himself doesn't know it well. Power seems to be like that. The work you do, one small signature, one small interest, may mean almost nothing to you, but for someone, it's a matter of life and death, someone prospers and someone fails, and if those things accumulate further, the country either prospers or fails."

He continued, "Truly different results are created depending on the attitude and work ethic of public officials. Please consider how great your responsibility and role are. I ask you again to have that sense of responsibility and do your best.”

Isn't this too obvious? Korean democracy is still immature and incomplete to the point where the president gathers cabinet members and explains such obvious things in detail, like teaching elementary school students.

If there is anything hopeful about the arrival of Lee Jae-myung's era, it is that the world is becoming one where common sense is treated as common sense. It has only been 6 months since we crossed the 'state of emergency,' the opposite of common sense, where those in power fear and respect the people. I hope that Lee Jae-myung's era will be a world where common sense works again as common sense, along with the normalization of the abnormal. We have come a very long way.