LEE MYUNG-BAK TRANSITION TEAM: ONE MONTH LEFT

C O N F I D E N T I A L SEOUL 000127 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/10/2018 TAGS: PGOV PREL PINR KS KN SUBJECT: LEE MYUNG-BAK TRANSITION TEAM: ONE MONTH LEFT BEFORE SHOWTIME Classified By: A/POL Brian D. McFeeters. Reasons 1.4 (b,d). ¶1. (C) Summary: President-elect Lee Myung-bak's Transition Team has had a busy first month. Charged with laying the blueprint for Lee Myung-bak's presidential term, they are now submitting legislation to begin to "pull the weeds" from the Roh and Kim Dae-jung administrations. Lee brings a different background and different style to the presidency -- as a career CEO -- and this has been reflected in his personnel decisions and how he runs the Transition Team. The team has great ambitions and recently has been accused of reaching too far. While there have been some missteps, the Transition Team, without a day off in sight, is pushing hard to set the direction for his administration and has accomplished much in its first month. END SUMMARY. ¶2. (SBU) President-elect Lee Myung-bak is running his staff ragged -- daily meetings at 7:00 a.m. for all staff with no weekends and no time off for the Lunar New Year -- to show the Korean people he will work hard from day one to correct the wrongs of the Roh administration. He will likely start his administration focusing on making visible changes to underscore that his administration will be "anything but Roh." After the April 9 National Assembly election, if he secures a comfortable majority, he will work to implement some of the harder reform measures. In February and March, we can expect "hardware" changes - from the trivial such as removing the presidential seal from plates and areas throughout the Blue House to the more substantial reshaping of various Ministries. Once the 18th National Assembly begins June 1, Lee can push through a more aggressive platform of "software" changes. -------------- DAY-TO-DAY WORK STYLE -------------- ¶3. (C) Lee Myung-bak himself has not attended many of the Transition Team meetings. Howeve, during one that he did attend on January 18, Lee spent two hours with a group of 50 team members discussing inauguration preparations. An attendee at the meeting told poloff that Lee first asked the group what the inauguration meant and what it should accomplish and proceeded to ask every person in the room for their opinion -- including the bodyguards and clerks. At the end of the meeting he pointed to one junior level official and said, "I think his answer was good. Keep working on it and let's discuss this again next week." ¶4. (C) Lee also said that the inauguration should sell Korea to the world so he asked the assembled group what Korea did best in the world. He answered, saying Korea was not number one in any field but had the most dramatic, fastest democratization process of anywhere in the world. The meeting, according to the source, was fun and they spent two hours going over a very few points. ¶5. (SBU) Press reports say that Lee has a unique way of being debriefed. It is not uncommon for his aides to have a hard time because he demands a particular type of briefing. According to one member of the foreign affairs team, during the campaign, Lee would call together several teams of experts and ask question after question about policy proposals. If someone was unable to answer his question, that person and his or her idea would be discarded and Lee would instead adopt the policy of the person who could answer all his questions. This cut-throat, competitive policy development system was imported from Lee's business experience and new in Korean politics. Lee advisors indicated that Lee might run the Blue House policy development process in a similar fashion. ¶6. (SBU) A recent press report described a similar process and noted that during briefings, Lee doesn't just sit there and listen. Rather, he asks for elaboration. Therefore, his subordinates must be prepared and ready to field all his questions if they are to secure his favor. Due to this style, many pundits note Lee prefers interacting with working level officials, rather than Ministers and Vice Ministers, who can answer his questions. These "answer-men/women" could take senior positions and be called on to brief Lee once he is inaugurated. If this is the case, it would be a repeat of what happened when Lee was the Seoul Mayor. ¶7. (SBU) Another press report noted that Lee encourages debate. If participants in a meeting agree on a report, Lee himself offers an opposing idea or attacks the content of the report. Lee has said many times he believes that is the way to further develop an idea. Confidants also say if Lee criticizes a report during a briefing session, it means he is strongly attached to the content or drafter of the report, and this does not mean the report will not become policy. Conversely, if Lee is not paying attention, it means he is not interested in the report or its drafter. -------------- PRO-"FAST TALKERS" -------------- ¶8. (SBU) Many reports have noted Lee has a penchant for those who talk fast and have good ideas, so it is no coincidence that a number of Lee's most trusted confidants talk quickly. They include Lee's closest adviser lawmaker Chung Doo-un, Lee's policy architect economics Professor Kwak Seung-joon, and the Transition Team spokesman Lee Dong-gwan. Once Lee Myung-bak is said to have mentioned, "It's a pain to listen to those who talk so slowly when briefing." -------------- BUREAUCRACY-AVERSE -------------- ¶9. (SBU) According to press reports, Lee commented on the January 13 report by the Transition Team summing up its two week-long sessions with Roh government agency representatives, by saying, "A report of this quality could have been drafted by a veteran Director General-level official within a couple of hours." On this a Transition Team official commented, "It was not so much a criticism of the general direction of the report, as a commentary on the bureaucratic, uptight approach of the report, since it was all drafted by government officials." Lee has a widely known aversion to public officials and their style of work. When City Hall officials opposed his idea of turning the Seoul Plaza into a skating rink during winter, Lee outsourced a private entity for the project and eventually followed through with his plan. -------------- - MISTAKES (1): RUSHING WITH HALF-BAKED POLICIES -------------- - ¶10. (SBU) Over the past three weeks, the Transition Team has on several occasions caused policy confusion by backtracking on incomplete initiatives that were announced hastily. This led President-elect Lee himself to warn the team on January 18, admonishing them to be more cautious lest these incomplete policy proposals damage the team's public image. Most acknowledge that such incidents were due to the Transition Team's preoccupation with producing an immediate outcome. There are some concerns surfacing in the press over a possible "boomerang effect," since populism and lack of professionalism were the main reason for the GNP's criticism of the Roh government over the past five years. ¶11. (SBU) Examples of half-baked policies include the Transition Team's instruction for all government agencies to cut their budget by 10 percent. This was subject to criticisms even from within the team, since it took into account neither the different fixed costs, nor any broader framework to put the budget cut into context. Another example was the Grand Canal project. Contradictory reports came out regarding the timing of the construction and whether government funds would be needed. Eventually President-elect Lee had to clarify himself that the construction would begin in early 2009, and it would be a private sector-funded project. In another case, a key official at the Economic subcommittee first argued that the Monetary Policy Committee should be separated from the Bank of Korea. Faced with severe criticism over government-dictated monetary policy, however, the team backed down and said it was an inappropriate comment. In still another case, Professor Nam Sung-wook, North Korea specialist said that Kim Young-nam, Standing Chairman of the Supreme People's Council of North Korea, should attend the Presidential Inauguration ceremony. He was later openly rebuked by the Transition chairperson Lee Kyung-sook and it was reported the comment was his personal opinion only. -------------- MISTAKES (2): OVER-AMBITION -------------- ¶12. (SBU) Press reports speculate that the excessive competition for recognition among Transition Team members has led them to push hard and overstate their position, leading to blunders and confusions. A case in point was the January 17 announcement of its plan to establish a "Task Force for Peaceful Industrial Relations." Although inspired by President-elect Lee's idea that sound labor-management relations would be worth one additional percentage point in the ROK's annual economic growth rate, they rushed the plan to publication without sufficient debate. They had to repeal the plan only four hours after the official announcement, under a barrage of criticism. The labor sector and NGOs in particular said the policy planned to "turn back the clock." ¶13. (SBU) Another widely criticized case involved a Transition Team official trying to survey the ideological tendencies of the editors of all major newspapers. The move was harshly criticized, and raised suspicions that the new government intended to reorganize the media market. The Transition Team maintained it was simply a mistake by an individual officer, but pundits pushed for the resignation of the Transition chairperson and compared the move to dictator Chun Doo-whan's reorganization of the media. -------------- MISTAKES (3): POPULISM -------------- ¶14. (SBU) The Transition Team offered many rosy policies to appeal to the public, to only back down later. These were mainly rightist-populist policies, like tax incentives, deregulation, and national security-related issues. Early on, the team announced its plan to cut oil prices and mobile phone tariffs, which it said would ease the working-class expenses. But faced with resistance, it subsequently backed down from these pledges. President-elect Lee vowed to moderate the pace of the oil price cut, since an across-the-board price cut amid high oil prices would only promote oil consumption, without helping the day-to-day lives of the working class. On the national security front, the Transition Team originally tried for a "re-negotiation" of the OPCON transfer, but faced with U.S. opposition, spokesman Lee Dong-kwan later explained they sought "only to adjust the timing, not the agreement itself." -------------- DIET: FROM "SKATE" TO "KWAMEKI" -------------- ¶15. (SBU) Even party foods seem to change according to government. In a recent get-together with the press corps on January 18, the Transition Team served "kwameki," President-elect Lee's favorite fish. Five years ago, Representative Kim Hong-il, son of former President Kim Dae-jung and affiliated with the then Millennium Democratic Party, treated party members to "skate," a specialty of President Kim's hometown in South Jeolla province. Fast forward to 2008, and the menu easily changes to kwameki, a specialty fish from Pohang, North Gyeongsang Province, Lee Myung-bak's hometown. For this reason, one reporter is said to have joked at the party about whether there was "a change in power under the sea as well." -------------- LEE MYUNG-BAK: WHAT HE IS UP TO -------------- ¶16. (SBU) Lee is immersed in reviewing the many reports that the transition has recently produced, usually reviewing several cases a day, either individually or in a meeting. As soon as the Cabinet reorganization plan was finalized, he is said to have prodded the Transition Team to follow up with the next project of deregulation. In those meetings, he has demanded his team achieve a "fundamental change in perspective" that would be concrete and efficient enough to convince the public and bureaucrats. He is said to have instructed the team to come up with an extremely detailed timeline to follow legislation at the National Assembly, requesting schedules by month, week, and day instead of by six-month blocks. On the foreign affairs front, he is said to have instructed the team to come up with a detailed plan on ways to establish an energy network with major oil producing countries, as well as to agree on an FTA with the EU, Canada, India, and Mexico within this year, to improve the visa system to attract more Chinese tourists, and to enhance the transparency of the inter-Korean cooperation fund. -------------- COMMENT -------------- ¶17. (C) If the Transition Team is any indication, Lee's Blue House will likely be run very differently than in previous administrations. Already, we have seen a tightening of the organization, manifested especially in the team's crackdown on media leaks. While the Transition Team still has wrinkles to iron out, the message seems to be getting more on track and the means of disseminating information more organized. After ten years out of power, it is natural for the GNP team to be rusty. Our interactions with the president-elect and his team lead us to believe they will take full advantage of the next month to correct their mistakes, coalesce and prepare to take the reins February 25. STANTON