Leaders of the ruling Saenuri Party on Monday vowed to navigate the embattled party through the current political turmoil amid calls for them to resign.

Members of the party’s top decision-making Supreme Council decided that the current leadership should stay on to “pick up the pieces” of the Choi Soon-sil scandal, which has sent the approval ratings of both President Park Geun-hye and Saenuri to an all-time low.

“For the time being, our focus is on navigating through this crisis,” said Saenuri leader Rep. Lee Jung-hyun, who previously served Park as a senior secretary. “Quitting, stepping down, and running away in hard times is taking the easy way out,” said the politician, who is the standard-bearer of the pro-Park faction within the party.

After the Choi scandal erupted last week, the rift between the mainstream pro-Park lawmakers and the rest has widened over how to salvage the party and restore voters’ confidence. 

The dissenting groups have called for a complete overhaul of party leadership which is dominated by those royal to the president, including Rep. Lee. Some demanded that the president leave the party.

Instead of resigning en masse, the Saenuri leadership accepted resignations of some party officials, including spokeswoman Rep. Kim Hyun-ah and public relations chief Rep. Oh Shin-hwan.

Earlier in the day, some 50 Saenuri lawmakers held a meeting to call for the prompt resignation of the party leadership and a gathering of rank-and-file members to discuss the agenda. Most of the attendees were dissenters of the pro-Park faction, such as former Saenuri leader Rep. Kim Moo-sung.

To rally more back-benchers behind their move, the lawmakers also decided to gather signatories from party members. They urged the leadership to accept opposition-led agenda, such as the establishment of a neutral Cabinet and the election of an independent prosecutor to investigate the Choi Soon-sil scandal.

“The leadership should have taken steps equivalent to the recreation of a party to reassure party members,” former Saenuri leader Kim was quoted as saying by the attendees. “I don’t think the current leadership takes this seriously.”

Some party officials suggested the conservative party should transform itself into a more moderate one by distancing itself from President Park, who has pushed the right-wing agenda through actions such as reinstating state-authored history textbooks.

Among the discussed reform measures is renaming the party. Officials from Saenuri’s forerunner, the Grand National Party, raised the allegation that Park’s confidante Choi, the daughter of pseudo Christian cult leader Choi Tae-min, was behind the decision to change its name to Saenuri, which, critics said, has religious overtones.

When serving as GNP interim leader in 2012, Park decided to adopt Saenuri as the party’s official name despite opposition from its former floor leader Rep. Yoo Seung-min, who has since become estranged from Park. In Korean, “Sae” means new and “Nuri” means world. “Nuri” is often used to name churches here.


By Yeo Jun-suk (jasonyeo@heraldcorp.com)