Park Geun-hye, new chairperson of the Grand National Party

Following Park's election Tuesday, the Uri Party responded good-naturedly, saying, "We hope the GNP is reborn as a partner in a new style of politics." Today, however, top Uri officials launched a murderous attack on Park. Shin Gi-nam, a member of the Uri standing committee, said, "In this era, in which the most important task is the liquidation of the Fifth and Sixth Republics (Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo), the GNP regressed to the Third Republic (Park Chung-hee)... The fact that the daughter of a military coup leader and leading figure behind the Yushin Constitution should be elected chairperson of this era's majority party is a historical irony."

Lee Bu-yeong, another Uri standing committee member, denounced her as the "daughter of a pro-Japanese lieutenant in Imperial Japan's Kwantung Army," and Han Myeong-suk, head of the party's election committee, said, "My husband received a 15 year prison sentence under Park Chung-hee's military dictatorship, and I received a two year sentence."

Only party head Chung Dong-young avoided direct attacks on Park, refusing to go beyond the line of saying, "Park must unconditionally withdraw the impeachment motion on her own in order to make a break with the past. The citizens are curious as to the meaning behind her smile and bright laughter when the impeachment resolution was passed."

Observers believe the Uri Party's savage attacks on Park on her first day of duties are because of Uri's wariness concerning Park's strong drive to remake the GNP as she moves the party out of its lavish headquarters to a tent sent up in Yeoido.

Both Park and her party refusing to respond directly to the Uri Party's assaults; the chairperson instead quietly visited with senior religious figures and performed 108 bows before the Buddha of Seoul's Jogye Temple.

Spokesperson Jun Yeo-ok tryed to take some of the power out of the attacks, saying, "Chairperson Park ordered me to make a 'dignified and magnanimous response.'" She claimed that the more the Uri Party tries to link Park with her late father and bring up problems of the past, all it will do is highlight the Uri's imagine as a party that depends solely on political strife.

Instead, Park closed the GNP's W40 billion party headquarters in Yeouido and began her duties as party head in a tent set up near Youido Park, in a space once used as an exhibit ground for medium and small-sized businesses.

Priority was placed to showing her moving the party headquarters and putting into practice a promise she made the day before to "show [Korea] an opposition party conducting its life in a tent set up on a field." She paid her respects at the National Memorial Board, and afterward attended an opening ceremony for the GNP's new tent headquarters. During the ceremony, she expressed regret for the party's past, saying "Even the honor of playing a leading role in bringing about modernity [in Korea] has faded."

In the afternoon, Park visited Myeongdong Cathedral and Jogye Temple; she made confession at the former, and bowed -- in Buddhist fashion -- 108 times at the later; she placed her energies in apologizing for and making a break with her party's corrupt past.

Park was originally planning to do 3,000 bows, but was told to do only 108 by Jogye Temple's abbot, who kindly warned her, "A person who has much to do shouldn't overstrain his or herself."

(Park Du-shik, dspark@chosun.com )