This is leadership! Can you still remember last months ferry disaster in Sewol, South Korea which led to the death of close to 300 people. Two things from that incident attracted my attention. First, when the captain and crew of that ferry were arrested, they covered their faces, and bowed down such that the cameras will not get their faces. They were ashamed of their actions. That is a nation and a people where SHAME still has its meaning. No placard carrying members of their families or their ethnic nationality were seen trying to defend them. No hired online thugs or journalists came on air or online to defend them. They would not have accepted such defence, if left on their own, they may probably commit Hara kiri. The 6825-tonne Sewol was carrying 476 people when it capsized and sank off the southern coast on April 16.The confirmed death toll stands at 286 with 18 still unaccounted for.Of those on board, 325 were children from a high school on an organised trip to the southern resort island of Jeju. Responsibility. Yesterday, the South Korean President Park Geun-Hye in a nationwide television address had this to say; The ultimate responsibility of the poor response to this accident lies with me,as the president responsible for the lives and safety of South Koreans, I offer my sincere apology for all the suffering, It is our duty to reform and transform the country so that these lives were not lost for nothing,now is the time to leave frustration behind and move forward. We have to set the country upright and transform it.I will stake my political life on correcting the wrong practices that have plagued our country for so long and to create a new republic of Korea . Action I have decided to dismantle the coastguard, she said, adding that its investigative activities would be taken up by the police and its maritime patrol operations will be handed over to a newly created ministry of national safety. The irresponsible acts of the captain and crew members who abandoned hundreds of people are practically an act of murder, Park said, adding that existing legislation would be amended to provide harsher penalties for officials found responsible for such accidents. Nobody asked if President Park was the ferry captain or if we expect her to be the Coast Guards that failed to respond on time. Yet she accepted responsibility and apologized to the entire nation. Rewind to the Immigration Service recruitment disaster recently, the Minister of Interior carried on as if nothing happened. He had hundreds of placard carrying protesters supporting him, and online warriors and journalists asked if we expect him to be at all the venues, and they exonerated the government from full responsibility. We have a very long way to go.
Posted on: Mon, 19 May 2014 08:37:41 +0000
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