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Underneath the meteoric rise

Posted August. 04, 2014 05:25,   

한국어

I recently had the opportunity to converse with people in a wide variety of fields. It was a point in time when former police office Kwon Eun-hee was nominated by the New Politics Alliance for Democracy to run for the July 30 by-elections, which sparked a loud controversy. Everyone agreed that this nomination was given as a reward and expected that it would backfire on the main opposition party. They also agreed that getting a superior or subordinate like Kwon was the worst thing that could happen, akin to stepping on a land mine.

At the National Assembly inspection hearing in August last year, Kwon claimed that she was under external pressure from former Seoul Metropolitan Police Commissioner Kim Yong-pan to reduce her investigations on allegations of manipulating public sentiment on the 2012 presidential election. On the other hand, all 13 police officers, including Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency Cyber Crime Unit analyst Kim Su-mi, contended item by item that there was no such pressure and that their conscience was clear. I am doubtful if all relevant people would say the same lie in a sensitive issue, which could have large political repercussions. In the first and second trials on Kim, the Court ruled against Kwon’s claims.

Kwon was a lawyer for approximately one year before being recruited as superintendent in 2005 when she was 31 years old. She left the police office in June this year. She may have screeched, posing as a force for justice, but she herself was full of liabilities as much as any corrupt politician, including allegations of coercing perjury and of plagiarism in the thesis of her master’s degree, in addition to accusations of reporting her husband’s assets to be much smaller than in reality. Dr. Gong Byeong-ho, entrepreneur and writer, criticized Kwon’s dissertation as 100 percent plagiarism for which she needed to take ethical and legal responsibility. If Kim Yong-pan is found innocent by the Supreme Court, Kwon may be investigated on accusations of perjury in a government hearing.

She may have snatched a National Assembly seat at the tender age of 40, but the Kwon-style rise to power is full of dirt. There may be an influx of civil servants who want to collude with politics with dreams of a meteoric rise in standing like a second Kwon. It would indeed be tiresome to watch someone who can backstab colleagues while just burying in one`s own awareness of reality. The mere imagining of Kwon being positioned in the Security and Public Administration Committee of the National Assembly as she aspires, and castigating her former superiors in the police is sheer farce. Kwon’s garnering a seat of power appears to be a depressing reflection of our twisted society.