Park In Limbo Summary

The article “Park in Limbo” elaborates a scandal of the engulfing South Korean President Park Hye and her relationship with an associate, a private citizen, meddling in the state affairs and influencing the decisions in the government. This is a story of a sitting President with the lowest approval rating 17% nationwide, erupting protests throughout the nation. Nation in Turmoil
The author begins with the bad news for Korea. Samsung Electronics a renowned global innovator and the nation’s biggest electronics company had killed its Note 7 smartphone, a flagship product. Due to the technical glitches of the phone, there was a global recall which cost over six billion dollars. The exports are a standstill and the debt is rising. Lotte Group has been indicted on charges of embezzlement. With this scale of the disaster, people of Korea were desperate for a recovery and they wanted a decisive leadership from the President of Korea. President Park instead was surrounded by her set of problems. Opposition party leaders and the people are calling her to step down. 40% of the south Koreans in a late October poll indicated that President should resign. Park, allegedly used her position to enrich herself and her family. The controversy stems from allegations that Park allowed her old friend, Choi
Soon Sil, to meddle with state affairs. Inefficient leadership

Even before the scandals broke through, Park was struggling to push through reforms to deal with big structural economic problems.
Park was literally a lame duck President due to lack of support from her own party. The unveiling scandals triggered a domino effect for her legacy. The Park scandal was interfering with government operations and tasks such as reviewing and approving budget proposals. Larger corporations do not have a good faith on the future economic growth. In one estimate done by Citibank Corp, the economy will grow only 0.1 percent. Park did not have any plans to address these issues as her grip was loosening over the government due to the allegations made on
her. A Pattern of misconduct In South Korea, the presidents have a terrible reputation of misusing the power. In 2004, the lawmakers impeach then-President Roh Moo for violating the election laws. Former president Lee Myung Bak, Park’s predecessor, was surrounded by corruption scandals and he apologized to public in July 2012. Now Park has found the same destiny. Park seems no exception in misusing the power A lesson from scandals
Park and her predecessors were part of the huge government organization with unlimited powers. The powers had been used in a destructive way. We can argue that the mistakes have been done in the multiple levels. Starting from the top managers to the mid-level managers. Without their participation, not all the crimes can be committed effectively. And this is what happened in the case of Wells Fargo CEO as well (refer). Not following ethics in the business will always lead into a disaster of epic proportions. When a well-known company Enron started doing shady accounting practices, this set the stage for the demise of Enron (http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2009445_2009447_2009502,00.html). Not only the CEO needs to do their job correctly, but the discipline need to be maintained in all level managers. In Park’s case, no one challenged her to give an explanation for misconduct. This should not be the case. When a member of the organization is corrupted, the whole organization gets affected. The perception is everything.