Are any of you following this drama involving South Korea’s President Park Geun-hye and her close friend Choi Soon-sil who has since been detained for essentially being a bad influence on the president? At first, I thought the media was overblowing things. Surely, a head of state is allowed to have friends, I thought to myself, until I read that Miss Choi is being accused of abusing authority and attempting to commit fraud. Apparently, she used her connections to the president to solicit money from financial institutions and unsuspecting individuals. President Park has had to issue multiple apologies and even reshuffled her cabinet but some still want her to tender her resignation for letting a private citizen wield so much power. I’ll be honest here. If one of my close friends were president, I would definitely take advantage and call in a few favours myself. Life is hard and if your friends or family can help out in any way, why not? Of course everything in moderation as the saying goes. I would not exploit other people on account of my friends holding powerful positions but that’s not to say I would not name-drop. And before you call me out, I bet you would do exactly the same. It really isn’t what you know but who you know and if you think about it, there must a couple of times you’ve only got ahead because of the influential people in your life. Whether at the bank where the security personnel led you to a back office where you then got attended to instead of waiting in line, at the school your children couldn’t get into until you met with one of the board members who happens to be an old friend or even at a fancy store where you managed to get a discount because you know the owner but other shoppers still had to pay the full amount. Another example - people who have great relations with the boss will use that to get subordinates or even staff who don’t necessarily report to them, to do whatever they want. If someone tells you what he and the boss had for lunch, you’re not going to say no when they ask you to “help” with a report they’re compiling, are you? If the only time you see your boss is at the end of year party, someone, somewhere knows that and they are going to use it to their advantage and usually, that is getting you to do their dirty work because they know there’s little or no chance of anything getting back to the man or woman in charge so in a way, none of us should be pointing fingers. But back to President Park, I think her “bestie”, if I can use pop culture lingo, knows something we don’t. Kind of like when someone knows all your secrets and to keep them quiet, you let them get away with many things. These two women have been friends for decades and there must be a good reason why the president put up with her for so long.
