The editorial recalled that the chief executive held a "state affairs meeting" on Sept. 16 and then was closeted with lawmakers from the "Saenuri Party" at Chongwadae.

What she uttered reveals her real intention to term the issue of granting the fact-finding committee the right to investigate and indict those responsible for the disaster "unreasonable assertion of bereaved families" and the demand for probing the truth about the disaster "an act of undesirable outside forces with a political purpose", it discharged.

Her declaration that she cannot accept the issue of the right to investigate and indict is little short of rejecting the institution of a special law, it held.