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Park Jie-won, former director of the National Intelligence Service. (Kim Bong-gyu/The Hankyoreh)

Park Jie-won, former director of the National Intelligence Service, offered a stinging rebuke on Tuesday to South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol’s castigation of the police for their shoddy response to the deadly crowd crush in the Itaewon neighborhood of Seoul on Oct. 29.

“Everyone in the Yoon administration is shoddy, from the president on down. It’s been a state of anarchy,” Park said.

“Saying that the police were the only ones who did anything wrong is the most cowardly act of all,” he added.

“It’s not as if the president did anything [to prevent the disaster]. Why is he bashing the police when he didn’t do anything himself?” the former spy chief said in a Tuesday interview with Kim Ou-Joon’s News Factory.

“If the police are shoddy, then in a certain sense so is the president, the prime minister, the interior minister, and the entire government. It’s a state of anarchy,” he continued.

“Why did they just sit there and watch the whole thing unfold for four hours?” Yoon asked, referring to the police, during a meeting held to review the national safety system on Monday. “Four hours” refers to the time that elapsed between the first call to the 112 police hotline at 6:40 pm and the actual disaster.

“Can we really say that the police had no authority in that situation?” the president added.

Park called for all of Yoon’s key advisors in the cabinet and the presidential office to resign en masse.

“The public won’t be satisfied until the entire cabinet, including Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, and the entire presidential office, including Chief of Staff Kim Dae-ki, are forced to resign and until Minister of Interior and Safety Lee Sang-min, the head of the National Police Agency, and the head of Yongsan District Office face criminal proceedings,” Park said.

“Not doing that and saying that the police were the only ones who did anything wrong is the most cowardly act of all,” he added.

Park noted that Yoon “hasn’t offered any kind of apology” for vulgar language caught on a hot mic while he was on a trip to the US and “hasn’t apologized this time either.”

“Is it an apology to pray and ask forgiveness at three religious centers? He’s just pigheaded. He seems constitutionally incapable of making an apology.”

By Joh Yun-yeong, staff reporter

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