It was one of the most shocking scenes in the violent demonstrations on the night of Nov. 14 in Seoul’s Gwanghwamun Plaza. A TV camera filmed a masked protester on the roof of one of the buses forming a police barrier dashing toward a policeman in full riot control gear complete with a helmet and a plastic shield. I was afraid a fierce fight would take place on the narrow roof of the bus.

To my amazement, the policeman lowered his body and raised his shield above his head instead of making a move to stop the approaching man. He virtually knelt before the opponent, although it was possible that he lost balance at the moment. The demonstrator pushed the policeman aside with a punch to his shield and ran toward the roof of the next bus. This sight of a few seconds told me which side won the battle that night.

The protest action by workers, farmers, students and other dissenters, totaling some 80,000 according to police estimates at different locations in central Seoul, continued until midnight, leaving more than 100 policemen injured and a score of demonstrators in detention. The video of police water cannon directly hitting a demonstrator invited heated protests from dissident groups and opposition politicians as the aged man suffered critical injuries.

The riot policeman succumbing to the lone attacker symbolized the state power currently unable to sustain its mission to maintain social order. It spoke volumes about how little confidence our law enforcement authorities have in performing their duties, no matter what strong words the national police chief or the prosecutor-general uttered afterward to express their determination to crack down on lawbreakers.

Senior officials of the government now ruling this republic are all said to be “looking to the top” as far as matters of law and order are concerned. The presidential authority, as much by dint of bureaucratic mannerism as the highly centralized constitutional system, continued to grow within the governing structure, while its actual power -- or effectiveness -- in controlling national affairs has rather declined in the face of rising self-centeredness of various sectors in our unique process of democratic development.

We do have a strong presidency but its purported strength is hardly proven in leading NGOs, industries, labor, academic institutions and individual taxpayers to join efforts toward indisputably desirable national objectives, such as public safety, cybersecurity, elimination of corruption and respect for law and order. I would not dare to advise anyone on how to manage a government, but I would point out just one problem area that needs to be addressed if we are to have a better state leadership.

Hours before Seoul saw its worst mass demonstrations in years, even more violent than the “mad cow disease” beef import protest in 2008, President Park Geun-hye left for Antalya, Turkey, to participate in the G20 summit. It was her third overseas trip since early September when she was invited to Beijing to attend the 70th anniversary events of China’s victory over Japan in World War II.

The president’s presence in the nation’s capital is of course not essential for the government to cope effectively with an abnormal situation like that of Nov. 14. However, many wonder whether the authorities would have reacted in the same weak-kneed manner that night if President Park was watching the scenes of pandemonium at Gwanghwamun and Seoul Plaza from the Blue House less than a kilometer away. The justice minister issued a statement of warning only the day after the outrage in which police were beaten up and their vehicles destroyed.

Late in September, Park visited New York for five days to attend the U.N. General Assembly and the Leaders’ Summit on Peacekeeping. Barely two weeks passed before the president made an official visit to Washington to discuss security and economic cooperation with President Obama. This trip had originally been scheduled for June but was postponed because of the MERS epidemic.

Back in Seoul, she presided over the long-awaited triangular summit with Chinese and Japanese leaders in Seoul from Oct. 31 to Nov. 2, to mend fences between the three Northeast Asian nations. Beginning Nov. 14, Park traveled to Turkey and then to Manila and Kuala Lumpur for the annual G20, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and East Asian Summits, extending her absence from Seoul while the National Assembly was deliberating on the government spending for next year.

The IS terror attacks and tension in the South China Sea added some urgency to these leaders’ conferences, but they have been more or less repeating the same agenda for years. From Manila, we heard presidents and prime ministers addressing the identical issues of investing in human capital development, fostering small and medium enterprises and enhancing regional economic integration. Again joining hands in a photo-op, the 18 participants of the EAS in the Malaysian capital, which followed the ASEAN Plus Three conference, emphasized the need to expedite the establishment of the East Asian Community.

Ever-expanding bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements and the emergence of new regional economic groupings such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank are leaving those loose and larger frameworks like APEC and EAS in perfunctory and ceremonial functions. Questions are raised as to the need for top national leaders to sit at every annual session with largely overlapping memberships. Vladimir Putin of Russia and Joko Widodo of Indonesia sent their deputies to this year’s EAS citing pressing domestic business.

There were times when our presidents wanted overseas tours to take a respite from domestic chores. The media continuously provided front-page and prime-time news coverage about their summit meetings with foreign leaders and warm receptions with Korean expatriate leaders. A battalion of Blue House-accredited press corps used to accompany the presidential tours, although they generally produced pooled reports.

China has long shown a model of the division of labor in the top leadership; Premier Li Keqiang substitutes for President Xi Jinping in overseas functions. Other countries may emulate it in the future. Next year, the Asia-Europe Meeting, a biennial event, will be added to the president’s autumn schedule. Why would we not consider dispatching the prime minister to regional summits, perhaps from next autumn?

By Kim Myong-sik

Kim Myong-sik, who served as head of the Korean Overseas Information Service, wrote editorials for The Korea Herald until 2012. – Ed.