Bright despair of the late lawmaker Park Se-il

Park Se-il, an honorary professor at Seoul National University, passed away on last Friday. He was the only lawmaker who vacated his seat of the National Assembly during the Lee Myung-bak administration. Back in March 2005, Park defected from the party to protest as the Special Act on Administrative City Construction (Special Act on Administrative City) passed the National Assembly. The special act was designed to pursue the relocation of government agencies to Sejong City with an aim to win the vote of Chungcheong provincial residents. If one is elected as a proportional lawmaker, he ow she would lose the post, according to the National Assembly Act. “It seems that she has a good character but I am not sure whether or not she has the leadership in a turbulent period,” the deceased lawmaker said about Park Geun-hye, the then leader of the Hannara Party.

He entered the political arena in 2004 when incumbent President Park was leading the party. In 1994, he was a top advisor of former President Kim Young-sam and made the catchphrase of “globalization” as a national agenda. He also brought up the topic of “advancement” and the term was used as the campaign promise of former President Lee Myung-bak. As a first-time lawmaker elected from the proportional representation system, Park was appointed as the leader of the party’s policy committee by the then leader Park Geun-hye. Even though she deeply trusted him, the two went separate ways due to different opinions on relocation to Sejong City.

Upon returning to university, the former lawmaker taught students and founded the HanSun Foundation for Freedom & and Happiness in 2005 The unification and advancement of the Republic of Korea were the works of his life. Lee Myung-bak visited Park’s mortuary on Saturday and paid his respects to the deceased. “The person, who is the most needed in our time, has passed away. It is a pity,” the former president said. Lee Myung-hyun, emeritus professor at Seoul National University, who served as education minister under the Kim Young-sam administration, and Chung Jung-kil, the board chairman of Ulsan University, lamented his death by saying that Park was the figure who was certainly needed in this turbulent time when the country is split into two different ideologies.

His motto was “see the world through people’s eyes’ and this clause was borrowed from Lao-tzu’s Tao-te-ching. Park spent his life to the unification and advancement of Korea with an attitude to unite knowledge and conduct. His pen name is seosaeng, whose meaning is young Confucian. In 2012, he established the Korea Vision Party and made efforts to reform political system but the time has turned him away. He had a big dream and a critical mind. He framed a grand discourse around conservative values and he was a statesman ahead of our time. He deplored the reality and said, “The moment of unification is getting closer, but there is no one who will achieve the great work of unification.” May he rest in peace.