Saenuri Party replaces photo in PR material at last minute

There is a flurry of backbiting over the photo featured in a policy promotion material that was produced by the ruling Saenuri Party on Tuesday.

The photo shown at the top on the right hand side in the material was the scene of President Park Geun-hye shaking hands with Saenuri Chairman Kim Moo-sung at the presidential office on Nov. 20 last year. In the photo, Kim is leaning his upper body a bit towards President Park who is all smiles.

Originally, working-level staff of the party planned to carry a picture only showing Kim engaged in activities to support the livelihoods of ordinary people in the section, but they reportedly changed the picture at the last minute. Informed sources say that Kim himself instructed the staff to replace that picture with the one showing Park and himself together. Analysts say that Kim’s decision is a step to mending conflict in relationship between the party and the presidential office, which is escalating into controversy of “welfare without a tax hike.”

“Chairman Kim strongly believes that the ruling party and the Park administration are a single group bound by a common destiny, and is always stressing this even in private meetings,” said a source in the party. “He has not stated (in public), but Chairman Kim would have felt highly stressed due to the recent situation.”

There had been an incident in which the party’s promotional material caused a stir in the past as well. When the party was updating its brochures and promotional materials in July 2012 after the then Grand National Party changed its name to Saenuri, the first page of its diary carrying contact numbers of the party leadership did not carry a photo of the then incumbent President Lee Myung-bak, which caused controversy. Officially, the party made an excuse by calling it a “mistake made by working-level staff,” but the prevailing belief was that it was a situation demonstrating the party had undeniably changed to the "Park Geun-hye Party."