Owning a mistake is especially hard in the East Asian culture. It’s been a long time I have seen a public figure admitting his wrongdoings.

Indeed.

Anyone who believes he personally agonised over this alone in a darkened room is being rather naive.

Or, you know, you could be a stand up person and be genuinely contrite.

He's a big time CEO and his company is impacted by how well he handles it. So of course there are PR/crisis people around. They specialize in making psychopaths look human.

But leaders are where they are because they make good decisions - their character does matter. Calling in the image-fixer types to clean up your mistakes is easy mode.