Category: Politics-Korea

Let me get this straight, President Lee gets to choose who the special counsel will be that will have the power to acquit him of all the corruption charges he previously faced before becoming President? Could you imagine if Trump did something like this, the left in the U.S. would be going crazy. However, in Korea you will hear nothing from the left there:

Hong Ihk-pyo, senior presidential secretary for political affairs, speaks at a press briefing at Cheong Wa Dae in Seoul on May 4, 2026. (Yonhap)

 President Lee Jae Myung has stressed the need for public input and careful deliberation, a presidential official said Monday, as the ruling Democratic Party (DP) pushes for a special probe into allegations that he was indicted in multiple cases based on fabricated evidence during the previous administration.

Hong Ihk-pyo, senior presidential secretary for political affairs, made the remarks at a press briefing, citing the president, after the DP proposed a bill last week to mandate a special counsel probe.

The bill calls for an independent investigation into suspicions that the prosecution under the previous Yoon Suk Yeol administration indicted Lee, then head of the main opposition party, in multiple cases, including a real estate development scandal, based on fabricated probes and evidence.

Lee was standing trials on various charges before proceedings were suspended or indefinitely postponed after he took office in June last year.

The bill allows a special counsel to take over Lee’s cases from the prosecution and decide whether to proceed with them, while giving the president the authority to appoint the counsel from among three recommended candidates. 

Opposition lawmakers have argued that the proposed bill would give the special counsel grounds to drop charges against Lee, calling it a move to acquit him in the cases.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but wouldn’t it be funny that if another Korean conservative takes power that they choose a special counsel to investigate the special counsel that dropped charges against Lee in order to reinstate them? We all know these charges will be dropped because otherwise President Lee would not be doing this.

This is an example of why I believe the only way Yoon will ever get out of prison is if a conservative President takes power again to pardon him. The Korean left is just going to keep finding ways to bury him with prison sentences to where he will likely never get out. For whatever reason it seems like they hate him more than former President Park Geun-hye:

An appeals court on Wednesday increased the sentence for former President Yoon Suk Yeol from five years to seven years in prison on obstruction of justice and other charges stemming from his failed martial law bid.

The Seoul High Court handed down the heavier punishment in a live-televised ruling, finding the ousted former president guilty of obstructing investigators from detaining him last year over his short-lived imposition of martial law in late 2024.

Special counsel Cho Eun-suk’s team had sought a 10-year prison term for Yoon.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

I don’t think Yoon will ever get out of jail as long as the Korean left is in power. It will take a future conservative leader to pardon him to ever get him out because the left intends to bury him with as many charges as they can find:

Former President Yoon Suk Yeol (Pool photo) (Yonhap)

 A special counsel team on Monday demanded a 10-year prison term for former President Yoon Suk Yeol during the appeals trial of his obstruction of justice case stemming from his 2024 imposition of martial law.

Special counsel Cho Eun-suk’s team sought the sentence at the final hearing at the Seoul High Court, double the five-year term handed down by a lower court in January.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but this is just one of 8 trials Yoon is involved in.

The impeachment of former President Yoon continues to drag down the PPP’s favorability in Korea:

One year after former President Yoon Suk Yeol’s ouster over his botched martial law crisis, the People Power Party (PPP), to which he belonged, is facing its worst slump in years. A new poll shows the main opposition party trailing the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) by 30 percentage points — the widest gap between the two parties since 2018. (…..)

The nationwide survey by Gallup Korea released Friday and conducted on 1,001 adults from March 31 to April 2 shows the DPK’s approval rating at 48 percent while the PPP’s was at 18 percent.

The 30-percentage-point gap is the largest since November 2018 by-elections, when the Liberty Korea Party, the predecessor to the PPP at the time, lost four seats in the National Assembly in the aftermath of the 2017 impeachment of former President Park Geun-hye, also a member of the conservative bloc. It is also the PPP’s lowest Gallup Korea result since November 2020.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

President Lee has faced multiple trials for being a crook, but there is no way he is this big of a crook. This sounds like fake news to me:

President Lee Jae Myung on Thursday lambasted a conservative YouTube channel for airing slush fund accusations against him, calling it “pathetic” and “malicious.”

The reaction came after the YouTube channel run by Jeon Han-gil, a former Korean history instructor and now a vocal supporter of former President Yoon Suk Yeol, aired an interview with a man making the allegations. 

He argued that Lee is preparing to flee to China and recently transferred 160 trillion won (US$106.5 billion) and military secrets to Chinese authorities in Singapore.

“Secret slush funds and leaking national military information? This is truly pathetic and malicious matador. It must be severely punished,” Lee wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

Lee made the remarks by citing a post by Rep. Han Jun-ho of the ruling Democratic Party, who criticized Jeon’s video and urged investigative authorities to step in immediately.

In the YouTube interview, the man claimed that U.S. intelligence operatives have figured everything out, but offered no concrete evidence to support the statement.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It makes me wonder how many other members of the National Assembly were taking bribes like she allegedly did?:

Kang Sun-woo, a former ruling party lawmaker and currently independent, speaks ahead of a parliamentary vote on a motion for her arrest during a plenary session at the National Assembly in western Seoul on Feb. 24, 2026. (Yonhap)

The National Assembly on Tuesday approved a motion to arrest Rep. Kang Sun-woo over bribery allegations related to a nomination by the ruling Democratic Party (DP).

Kang, now an independent lawmaker who formerly belonged to the DP, is accused of receiving 100 million won (US$68,300) in exchange for supporting the nomination of former Seoul city councilor Kim Kyung as a DP candidate ahead of the 2022 local elections. Kang was ousted from the party after the allegations surfaced last month.

The arrest motion passed in a 164-87 vote with three abstentions and nine invalid ballots during a parliamentary plenary session.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

I have to give President Lee credit, he has been governing smartly since taking office and his approval rating continues to show this:

President Lee Jae Myung’s approval rating rose to 56.5 percent last week, a survey showed Monday, driven by the government’s efforts to stabilize the property market.

The rating was up 0.7 percentage point from the previous week, while the negative assessment fell 0.2 percentage point to 38.9 percent, according to the survey by Realmeter, commissioned by a local business news outlet.

Realmeter attributed the increase to Lee’s ongoing push to curb home prices by ending an exemption from the heavy capital gains tax for owners of multiple homes and the stock market’s rise.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

I guess with so many conservatives being tried and put into jail there are not many left to operate a Youtube channel compared to the ruling liberal party:

In the 300-seat National Assembly, lawmakers are increasingly using the US-based video platform to bypass traditional media and speak directly to voters, with some pulling in half a million subscribers.

Estimates compiled by The Korea Herald from publicly available YouTube data show that, as of Feb. 1, 25 South Korean lawmakers had more than 100,000 subscribers, qualifying them for silver play buttons. Of these, 19 were from liberal or left-leaning parties and six were conservatives.

Rep. Jung Chung-rae, a four-term lawmaker and chair of the Democratic Party, topped the list with 687,000 subscribers, followed by Reps. Kim Byung-joo and Park Sun-won with more than 500,000 each. Other Democratic Party lawmakers with large followings included Reps. Park Ju-min and Choo Mi-ae, both exceeding 300,000 subscribers, while Rep. Yong Hye-in of the minor Basic Income Party ranked fifth overall with 375,000.

Among conservatives, first-term lawmaker Rep. Joo Jin-woo led the People Power Party with 362,000 subscribers, followed by Reps. Yu Yong-weon, Ahn Cheol-soo, Cho Jung-hun and Na Kyung-won. Rep. Lee Jun-seok, chair of the minor conservative Reform Party, also surpassed 200,000 subscribers.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.

It appears that President Lee has found X to be a good way to communicate directly to the public just like President Trump:

President Lee Jae Myung’s increasingly frequent social media posts warning of an end to a tax waiver for multiple homeowners have put his housing agenda — and his direct-to-public messaging — at the center of a widening political debate between rival parties.

The main opposition People Power Party said Monday that Lee’s posts urging homeowners to sell amount to “intimidation.” The party went further, asking whether Lee “learned it” from US President Donald Trump, who has made social media a key tool of governance and used it to deliver major policy announcements.

Following his New Year’s news conference on Jan. 23, Lee has stepped up his use of his official X account to weigh in on major policy issues. The approach aligns with his long-standing communications style: he relied heavily on social media while serving as mayor of Seongnam and governor of Gyeonggi Province.

Housing policy has accounted for the lion’s share of his posts. Lee has posted about the issue 11 times: one post on Jan. 23, four posts on Jan. 25, three on Saturday, one on Sunday and two on Monday.

Lee’s posts largely reaffirm his determination to terminate the exemption for the higher capital gains tax on multihomeowners that began with the inauguration of the Yoon Suk Yeol administration on May 9 in 2022 and was extended each year.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.