Park's alternative world

President Park Geun-hye's world is that of an autistic. The ongoing impeachment trial has been presented as a circus to everyone except her and her ardent, flag-waving supporters. Obviously, she is involuntarily inserted in the spectacle because of her inability to give a better explanation of what happened. What is so surprising is that when she could voluntarily engage to get herself cleared of possibly far-fetched thus untenable accusations, she is just there, merely suffering all so patiently though with the help of her repeated assertions of her unconvincing innocence, quite like Kafka's Hunger Artist. For every apology she attempts, she faces a forceful outcry against her glaring lies. She even smiles often despite her protracted ordeal, which should be crushing enough to make an average victim fail under it almost instantly. How is she so patient? Is it perhaps because it is her best personality trait? If not, why?

Park has been suspected and accused by the special prosecutor and his deputies of conspiring with Choi Soon-sil, who previously appeared more intent on controlling the nation's supreme leader through supernaturally assisted manipulation, at least in the public perception. Park's "shaman" confidant now looks more like a virago in anyone's neighborhood, coldly focused on her legal fight and anxiously looking after her offspring. Her poise which she demonstrated in her public speaking stunt not only galvanized the press through her perp walk, but also frightens her step-brother, who is no less busy at the moment spilling the beans after a long lull of forced muteness.

A private wrangle can eventually fan out into a public duel, if furnished with apt paraphernalia. And it takes an apple of discord, which can serve as a physical prop that can bring the tragic flaw to the fore. We know well that the step-brothers and step-sisters quarreled over their father's money. Ill-disposed money can break hearts and often results in the parting of ways for family members. But money itself cannot have such a tragic quality that the country now threatens to split into two nations. There must be some other factor in the public subconscious that simply clicks with Park's subliminal heirloom from her father. Hamartia is engendered by hubris.

One possibility is that she has some other fact running behind this public scene. From the secret world, many interesting episodes have so far rolled out through figures who were quite close to her or her family. Allegedly, bearer bonds are part of the cached cash; the old dictator had a grand plan to let the first daughter carry the national scepter just like family inheritance; and the religious leader who ran the public-private project met such a futile ending, perhaps at the hands of his loved ones, who are connected to an unidentified network of nefarious folks and have thus registered grisly footprints through their erstwhile-undisclosed life.

Some people are still dying to hear eureka about a finally discovered smoking gun that would rivet the nation once again and thereby crucify the President for her private connections and public disconnect. This much evidence should lead to a guilty verdict on her. Oddly enough, that is not happening yet. What has gone wrong?

All the world's a stage, for sure. It was shamanism that took the national theater by storm. The rumored characterization that had long been entrenched in the public subconscious was so alarming that the entire nation, including not only the young and sturdy but also the old and wobbly, spontaneously mobilized itself in a collective posture of self-defense against their "finally identified" mysterious iniquity. The queen held hostage by two generations of a shady religious household, starting when she was a young princess. And all the bawdy stories of trysts and escapades to boot. While discussing hearsay about a romantic relationship, nearly everybody takes a time machine and throws themselves so far backward that they feel so comfortable with the old decorum and buttoned-down insistence on punctilioes and peccadilloes.

With the devil frittered away, the focus now lies on government and corporate money mishandled and perhaps misappropriated to serve private ends as well. And there is the sempiternal duel of national security versus democracy. One crazy old man's misguided fervor, but a gigantic ripple effect throughout the local culture industry. The shaman and her friends now sound like a bunch of outmoded fascist refuses. The incipient religious war has apparently died down, leaving the public less than euphoric over an earthier outcome.

With the President sticking to her multi-layered somnambulism and ventriloquism (apparently linked to her health issues), the Korean crusaders, militias, sunshine patriots, community coordinators, neo-Confucians and stern moralists have had it their way. Nevertheless, there is a possibility that President Park will be spared punishment at the court. All this, thanks to her alternative facts drummed up by an imagined solidarity, which began by missing the whole point from the very first beginning.

Heejong Kwon is a former lecturer in English at Korea University. The Korea Times asked for this contribution after seeing his active engagement as a Facebook commentator.