It is truly natural that support and opposition have poured in to a capital relocation plan, which aims to move public bodies in 2012 and build a city with a population of 500,000. Evidently, the political environment on the Korean Peninsula will be different from the current situation. What if the capital of Korea is moved from the center of the Korean Peninsula to a southern inland province when reunification is feasible or the atmosphere for reunification is created? How can we make up for this retrogressive action, which has consumed an astronomical amount of money?

The president said that supporting the relocation means showing confidence in him, while opposing the plan is tantamount to a drive to oust him. We must feel despair and helplessness about the nation’s fate and situation, and our destiny. Why the president directly links opposition to a certain policy to an attempt to oust him? How many times has the president has tried to connect criticism against him to a motion to discredit the head of state? Has this kind of thing been witnessed in other countries?

The president noted, “If a policy collapses, the driving force of the government will totally collapse, too.” The abandonment of the capital relocation may affect some policies that are related to the relocation, of course. However, in reality, the president’s unreasonable persistence on the capital relocation and emotional responses to the anti-relocation movement block more essential policies from moving forward of invigorating the economy, strengthening national security amid the changing security environment, creating jobs for desperate unemployed young people, restoring peaceful relations between labor and management, and encouraging domestic and foreign investors.

The parliament consists of ruling parties and opposition parties and parliamentary politics is bound to accompany divided opinions over every policy. The president’s remark that opposition to a particular policy is equivalent to a campaign to unseat him no more than implies that he will not even try to talk with opposing parties. That will make parliamentary politics lose its ground in the country.

The president said, “Who are they that are leading public opinions in opposition to the relocation of the administrative capital? They are newspaper companies located in downtown Seoul in gigantic buildings around the Central Government Complex.” No matter how detestable those newspaper companies are whose criticisms are harsh to his ear, how can the president pour out his groundless emotions toward the newspaper companies that have shared the glory and shame of the nation much longer than he has.

The president also said that the press had no interest in the issue in the first place. But how many people would dare think that the president will push for the project that needs the nation’s entire capacities to be invested just because it was his campaign pledge. Moreover, the truth is that newspapers have been pointing out problems with the project from the very moment when he made campaign pledges, and as experts have expressed concerns over the project following the government’s announcement of the candidate sites for the new administrative capital, they have stressed the need to discuss the issue in public in earnest. If the president intends to criticize the press for its lack of interest at an early stage, he should first ask where and what the state-run broadcasting companies and pro-Roh Internet sites were doing then? Those broadcasting companies and Internet sites bombarded the public with news opposing the impeachment around the clock in favor of the president when the country was clamorously divided over the president impeachment.

Even yesterday, 146 leading elders from various circles announced a statement that calls for delaying the capital relocation until the country reaches a public consensus. The statement was made to persuade and advise the president to become open to other opinions. If he continues to insist that opposition to the project is the same as a campaign to oust him, it is not different at all from the 9th Emergency Measure that prohibited movements themselves to oppose, criticize or abolish the "Yushin" Constitution for Revitalizing Reform. Does the president think that the act of criticizing the capital transfer is equivalent to a movement to overthrow the government? The president should try to open his mind. Again, it is the president’s mind that matters.