[Choice Times=Joo-Hyun Park, CEO of Jaedam Entertainment]

Watching the comedy-like news that broke today, I am reminded of an amusing “rumor” that has recently been making the rounds in Yeouido, so I will share it here.

The reason for airing this rumor is simple. At first glance it sounds like a third-rate novel, but when viewed against how the current situation is unfolding, the pieces line up in a strangely convincing way. More importantly, by spreading it widely, there is a hope that—even if only by taking the edge off that person’s peculiar temperament—it might prevent the plan from actually being carried out.

I have pointed this out repeatedly: in order to monopolize the pinnacle of power, he smashed all the “watermelons” among his potential rivals. Any green shoots that might have grown into a next or next-next contender were mercilessly trampled, and every critical voice was driven out the door. As a result, the vast forest called the “party” has turned into a “perfect desert,” with nothing left standing but a single person’s statue.

But the side effects of that desertification are now tightening around his own neck. His chief bodyguard, “Jeong,” strapped on an armband and eventually began acting as the leader of an uncontrollable rebel force. The problem is that there is not a single remaining “hunting dog” within the party capable of checking that rebel or getting its hands dirty in his stead. He burned down the forest with his own hands—an entirely predictable outcome.

Here is where the rumor begins.

If it is true, it is laughably tragic. The desperate boss’s response is pitiful to the point of being almost touching. Lacking a heavyweight card capable of controlling Jeong, he hurriedly sent “Kim,” who had been in the cabinet, back to the party to serve as a breakwater. Apparently still uneasy, an even more bizarre ghost story has begun circulating in Yeouido: a “Hong as prime minister” scenario.

One could simply burst out laughing and move on, but there was the precedent of Lee Hye-hoon in the past, and it is not unreasonable to wonder whether Hong would really reject such an offer outright if it were made.

In short, the situation looks like this. Someone suffering from paranoia fired all the security guards at his own house, and now that the housekeeper—grown large—has begun shaking the deed to the house, there is no one left to stop him. So he sidles up to the old lion next door, whom he has growled at all his life, and courts him: “Why don’t you come stand guard in my yard with a name tag that says ‘prime minister’?” From the lion’s perspective, he might scoff and say, “Are you trying to lock me in a doghouse?” But the very fact that such an outlandish farce of borrowing another’s knife to kill (借刀殺人) is being planned and whispered about makes one wonder whether there really is no smoke without fire.

He may have thought that eliminating all competitors would secure him eternal monopoly, but those who destroy systems are ultimately crushed by the rubble of the very systems they collapse. Those who shatter all their own shields cannot even block the blade flying in from the nearest direction.

Having exterminated all opposition and gained a lonely throne, he now sends out an SOS to figures he once considered enemies but never openly clashed with. This is the perfectly designed isolation he built for himself. It is an ugly sight, but it is also the one point that makes his sleepless late-night social media posts understandable.

Amid these swirling rumors, today’s community incident erupted.

In the past, Jeong was a first-class contributor who diligently sharpened the guillotine blade for his lord, declaring, “Teeth are Jeong, and Jeong is teeth.” When armbands were handed to supporters and anyone voicing even the slightest dissent was labeled a “watermelon” and sent to the execution block, he stood beside it all, applauding the loudest.

But the algorithm of an extreme fandom operates solely on “flawless, absolute obedience.” When Jeong took a stance that looked like charging toward a merger with the Fatherland Innovation Party, the blind system he had nurtured instantly classified him as an “enemy” and carried out a merciless cyber people’s tribunal.

The driest yet funniest part is this: a mere internet café manager solemnly issued an eviction order to the representative of the ruling party, telling him to “accept this result in full.” The party’s democratic system has become hollow, and the leader of the ruling party—part of the state protocol hierarchy—is subjected to “digital exile” by anonymous netizens. This absurdly surreal scene is the bare face of the “party-member-centered democracy” they so proudly boasted of.

The expelled party leader’s follow-up move is the finishing touch to the comedy. Driven out of “Jaemyung’s Village,” he packed his bags and defected to Kim Eo-jun’sDdanzi Ilbo, declaring tearfully that “this is the true barometer of public sentiment,” performing a pitiful act of mental self-consolation.

Whether it is the boss left alone in the desert, or the bodyguard whose head was severed by the guillotine he himself built and who now sets off on a road of digital exile, it is hard to deny that this is a cruel yet perfectly constructed piece of black comedy.

#PoliticalBlackComedy #PowerIsolation #DigitalExile