Revocation of lines on China in Park’s speech is diplomatic gaffe

The presidential office cancelled a portion of President Park Geun-hye’s speech that it circulated in advance at a meeting with the head of a diplomatic think tank in New York on Wednesday, in a fuss that cannot be taken lightly as a simple incident. The president’s speech that the presidential office distributed to reporters in advance included lines suggesting, “Some have the view that South Korean is leaning towards China, and I think this is due to misunderstanding caused for lack of understanding about the South Korea-U.S. alliance. I hope that this event will serve as an opportunity to dispel such a view.” However after the end of the meeting, the presidential office requested media outlets to delete these sentences, saying, “The president did not speak in line with the script.”

The president generally reads as is the script of her speeches that are distributed in advance to the media. The sentences that the presidential speech requested media organizations to delete this time were close to the gist of the speech in question. During a president’s overseas tours, the president gives a key message of her speech to the presidential secretary for press affairs, who then drafts a script jointly with the foreign affairs ministry and staff at the office of the senior presidential secretary for foreign affairs and national security, and finalizes it after getting approval from the president. In the process, the script is revised multiple times. It is a rarity that the presidential office includes matters that are diplomatically sensitive in a speech script distributed in advance and ask reporters to remove at the scene as this time.

When President Park and Chinese President Xi Jinping paid reciprocal visits to China and Korea this year and thus displayed their friendly ties, some watchers in Washington suspected, “The Park Geun-hye administration’s South Korea-U.S. alliance policy might be ambiguous.” Using this situation as an opportunity, Japan circulated the rumor that “South Korea is leaning toward China,” and sought to drive a wedge of distrust between Seoul and Washington. The message that was actually excluded from her speech was lines that emphasized the importance of the South Korea-U.S. alliance by expressing concern about such a mood.

President Park could have excluded from her speech relevant lines, judging that China might express discontent that “President Park was wary of Washington.” Even so, including issues that are diplomatically sensitive in her speech, only to make excuse by saying “It was just reference material” after the end of the event, is a significant diplomatic gaffe that cannot be overlooked. If certain remarks were feared to cause misunderstanding, the presidential office should have excluded them from her speech in the first place. If the incident has happened due to lack of adequate coordination between the foreign ministry and the presidential office, it is all the more serious problem.

A president’s speeches and messages should be clear and precise. It is all the more true on the global stage where fierce war of diplomacy is conducted. The presidential office is asked to clearly explain what has happened.