Category: Politics-Korea

This seems like yet another attempt by the Moon administration to deflect attention from their own online opinion rigging scandal:

Police said Tuesday they have summoned former National Police Agency chief Cho Hyun-oh as part of a probe into suspicions that he spearheaded massive cyberoperations for the conservative government of the early 2010s.

Cho was ordered to appear for questioning at 9 a.m. on Wednesday. He served as the commissioner-general from 2010-12.

The 63-year-old is accused of abusing his power and instructing the agency to launch online maneuvers aimed at swaying public opinion in favor of the Lee Myung-bak government and his policies.

The police agency’s cybercommand allegedly had its own officers to write more than 40,000 Internet comments supporting the government. The cyberteam is also accused of ferreting out those who posted any negative comments about the Lee government.  [Yonhap]

It will be interesting to see if the Moon administration is able to get this guy locked up while their own people who did the same thing during the last election go free.

President Moon’s approval rating is still very high at 58%, but it has dropped nearly 20 points in the past three months which has to be worrying:

President Moon Jae-in’s approval rating dipped to a record low of 58 percent, the first time the president’s popularity fell below the 60 percent level since he took office in May 2017.

In a poll conducted by Realmeter between Monday and Wednesday of 1,507 adults nationwide, support for Moon declined by 5.2 percentage points to 58 percent from 63.2 percent a week earlier amid controversy over minimum wage hikes that have hurt small business owners and seemingly depressed new hiring across the country.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but I wonder what President Moon’s approval rating will be once the Kim regime reneges on its promise to denuclearize?

I think deep down most South Koreans know this guy is right, but prefer the current fantasy that things will be different this time with Kim Jong-un:

Hong Joon-pyo, the former chief of the main opposition Liberty Korea Party (LKP), has reiterated his opposition to the government’s North Korea policy.

Writing on Facebook on Saturday, the conservative politician, who is visiting the U.S. at the moment, argued that North Korea’s attitude has not changed at all.

He said that in order to seek a breakthrough in the Cold War situation on the Korean Peninsula through dialogue and compromise, a change in the other side’s attitude and posture is required.

But Hong insisted that North Korea has not changed at all and is only putting on a show, adding that leading the South Korean public to believe the North has changed could bring about an even bigger catastrophe.

The former LKP chief said that North Korea will never give up its nuclear program. He added that if it did attempt to, leader Kim Jong-un would immediately be purged by his hawkish military.  [KBS World Radio]

Despite the sharp drop President Moon’s approval ratings remain very high:

President Moon Jae-in’s approval rating dropped sharply this week, a poll showed Thursday, amid concerns over a planned minimum wage hike that critics say is likely to further slow the local economy.

In a survey conducted by Realmeter on Monday through Wednesday, Moon’s approval rating came to 61.7 percent, down 6.4 percentage points from a week earlier.

The rate of decline was the steepest since Moon took office in May 2017, according to the local pollster. The latest reading also was the second lowest since Moon’s inauguration.

The sharp drop follows a controversial decision by the minimum wage commission to hike the country’s hourly minimum wage to 8,350 won ($7.39) from the start of next year, up 10.9 percent from the current 7,530 won.

The president apologized for what he called his government’s inevitable failure to raise the minimum wage to 10,000 won per hour by 2020. However, many, especially small and medium-sized businesses, argue the increases have already been too sharp and too frequent.

Of 1,504 adults surveyed in the latest poll, 42 percent of all respondents said the planned wage increase is too steep while another 40 percent answered the rise seemed adequate.

The ruling Democratic Party’s approval rating slipped 3.8 percentage points to 41.8 percent, marking five consecutive weeks of decline, while that of the main opposition Liberty Korea Party advanced 2.5 percentage points to 19.5 percent.  [Korea Times]

Despite having a high approval rating, remember how quickly these numbers can change; former President Park once enjoyed high approval ratings as recently as 2015 when she was at 54%.  She ended here her Presidency in 2017 at 5%.

The piling on of former President Park Geun-hye continues:

A Seoul court on Friday sentenced former President Park Geun-hye to eight years in prison for illegally taking off-book funds from the state spy agency and interfering in elections during her term in office.

Televised live, the Seoul Central District Court meted out the guilty verdict to the 66-year-old, who’s already serving a 24-year jail term on a string of corruption charges in a nation-rocking scandal that led to her ousting last year.

The court also ordered her to forfeit 3.3 billion won (US$2.91 million).  (…….)

She’s also been indicted for interfering in the then-ruling Saenuri Party’s candidate nominations for the 2016 general elections.

But the court on Friday acquitted her of the bribery charges, ruling that the NIS provisions of its funds to Park’s office were not paid in return for any favors.  [Yonhap]

So if the funds were provided by the NIS were not in return for favors then why were they providing them to former President Park?  Because they have been providing the funds to past ROK Presidents as well:

The court acknowledged that it has been customary for the spy agency to provide funds to the presidential office from its own state coffers, known as the untraceable special activities fund.

The fact that the then spy chiefs had delivered the funds to Park’s Cheong Wa Dae in a fixed amount, and on a regular basis, is far from the conventional way of paying someone a bribe, which usually comes in a lump sum payment at one time.  [Yonhap]

Basically what the NIS has been doing is giving the ROK President money to pay for things like cell phones and medical treatment that would not be subject to any government record keeping.  However, some of her expenses with this secret fund were definitely shady:

Park allegedly squandered the taxpayer money on maintaining her private house, financing a boutique where her secret confidante Choi Soon-sil — the central figure in the corruption scandal — had Park’s clothes made and other private purposes, including massage treatment.  [Japan Times]

I think the most significant thing about this ruling is that if Park was convicted of receiving money from the NIS, then former President Lee Myung-bak who has also been arrested for corruption will also get convicted for the same thing if he received NIS special activities funds.

What I am wondering is if the NIS was also making the payments to former President Roh Moo-hyun as well?  The opposition party in South Korea has already claimed that the Roh administration had their own special activities fund they wanted a special counsel to investigate.

The proposed investigation largely targets key figures from the former liberal Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations of 1998-2008. It also seeks to check whether the NIS and prosecution under the incumbent government have misused their funds.

“The misappropriation of special activity funds has long been a practice, so to speak, and it is one of Korea’s representative ills,” the request reads. “We demand institutional improvements be made by addressing the suspicions through a thorough investigation.” [Yonhap]

So far the Moon administration has not allowed any investigation into the prior Roh and Kim administration’s use of special activities funds.

Former President Roh committed suicide after the Lee Myung-bak administration began an investigation into him taking bribes.  There would be no legal implications if the NIS gave him money since he is deceased, but it would still be an interesting fact to know.  President Roh was hugely popular with the South Korean left and current President Moon Jae-in was his chief of staff at the time.  This is likely why the prior left wing administration will not be investigated.

This is also why the conservatives in South Korea consider the arrest and imprisonment of former Presidents Lee and Park as political payback for causing Roh’s suicide by exposing his corruption.

It has been a good week for President Moon Jae-in:

The ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) has swept the local elections as well as by-elections for 12 empty National Assembly seats.

According to exit polls and the vote count by midnight Wednesday, the DPK clinched 14 out of 17 governor and mayoral posts. The largest conservative Liberty Korea Party (LKP) managed to win in the mayoral and governor elections in Daegu and North Gyeongsang Province ― its traditional strongholds. Independent candidate Won Hee-ryong won the Jeju governor’s post.

The DPK overwhelmingly won in southeast regions including South Gyeongsang Province, Ulsan and Busan, exit polls showed. The party had never won elections in these regions before. The outcome means the liberal party successfully overcame deep-rooted hostilities in these areas, largely thanks to the high popularity of President Moon Jae-in.   [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but I have always said that President Moon may be a leftist, but he is an extremely smart leftist.  Does anyone think it was just a coincidence that the Trump-Kim summit was timed to happen right before the election?  Also look at how Moon buried the damaging Druking scandal by naming a special prosecutor right before the Trump-Kim summit.  This timing assured that the news would be buried by coverage of the summit.

Finally the Moon administration has been able to effectively take over control of most of the major media outlets in South Korea.  Unless his North Korea policies end up imploding over the next year I expect that President Moon and thus the LKP will remain popular in South Korea.

The ties to the Moon campaign to the blogger behind the online opinion rigging scandal before the election has expanded:

A political blogger known as Druking who allegedly used software to rig public opinion for – and later against – President Moon Jae-in had more ties to Moon’s aides and confidants than previously thought.

The Blue House found in an internal investigation that Moon’s personal secretary, Song In-bae, met with members of the blogger’s political group before last year’s presidential election, when they allegedly engaged in suspicious online activities to support Moon, then a candidate.

“Song met with members of the group four times,” Kim Eui-kyeom, the Blue House’s press secretary, said during a briefing on Monday. “The first was in June 2016.”

An acquaintance of Song who volunteered in his failed National Assembly run in 2016 first suggested the meeting. The acquaintance was part of Druking’s group. Some members allegedly requested that Song bring Kim Kyoung-soo, a former lawmaker with close ties to Moon.

“It is normal for campaign members to meet lots of people during election season,” Kim Eui-kyeom said. “Song was simply doing that in bringing Kim Kyoung-soo to the meeting. We found that Song did not meet with Druking after the election, so that was the end of the Blue House’s investigation.”   [Joong Ang Ilbo]

Readers may remember that Kim Kyoung-soo is the Democrat Party representative that authorized and directed Druking’s online activities.  It appears that Moon’s personal secretary needed someone to work with the bloggers and chose Moon’s close friend Kim Kyoung-soo to be that person.  What is further interesting is that Song even took payments from the bloggers:

According to the Blue House, Song voluntarily requested the internal probe after Kim Kyoung-soo held a news conference on April 16 about his alleged connection with Druking. Blue House officials questioned Song on April 20 and 26 and found he had received money from Druking’s group but found no issue with the payment.

“They insisted on paying him an honorarium for meeting them,” Kim Eui-kyeom said. “Song initially refused to take it, but they insisted. He received a total of 2 million won [$1,844], which was given to him as 1 million won each time over two times.”

This is pretty amazing that President Moon’s personal secretary not only met with blogging group behind the online opinion rigging scandal multiple times, but even took a nearly $2,000 cash payment from them and yet the Blue House say there is nothing to see here.  What further adds to this is the fact that NIS personnel are in jail for online opinion manipulation and former Presidents Park and Lee and others are all in jail for alleged bribes.

In this case we have President Moon’s own personal secretary taking a cash payment from a group conducting illegal activity, that after the election made requests for government positions and received some of them.

Here are more details about the online opinion scandal which is the current focus of South Korean politics:

A sprawling online opinion rigging scandal in South Korea is stirring up a heated debate over the morality of polemic writers, the credibility of cyberspace discourse and whether to restrain the online freedom of expression to curb politicking.

Over the past several days, the scandal involving an influential blogger, who goes by the alias Druking, has roiled politics with the ruling Democratic Party (DP) quickly severing ties with the former party member, and the rival parties suspecting its possible link to his alleged misdeeds.

On Tuesday, the prosecution indicted Druking, surnamed Kim, and two others for allegedly using a computer program in January to jack up the number of “likes” or “feel the same way” clicks for two comments critical of the liberal government on a news article carried by the online portal Naver.

The article was about the government’s decision to have the two Koreas form a joint women’s hockey team for the PyeongChang Winter Olympics in February. The trio are suspected of using 614 different IDs to increase the number of the clicks.

They reportedly told police that they wanted to make it look like conservatives manipulated the comments, as they tried to test the program, known to be often misused to rig rankings for most searched commercial products.

The case attracted keen political attention, following the revelations that DP Rep. Kim Kyoung-soo, one of the most trusted confidants of President Moon Jae-in, has known and communicated with the key suspect through meetings or social media since 2016.

Although the lawmaker denies any involvement, the revelations have triggered speculation that Druking, with a large following in cyberspace, could have rigged online opinions even in the lead-up to the 2017 May presidential election.

The suspicion was reinforced as Kim Kyoung-soo admitted that he came to know Druking since mid-2016, visited the blogger’s publishing firm upon request in the autumn that year and met him again before Moon’s presidential primary last year.  [Yonhap]

You can read much more at the link, but the fact that a political party was leaving fake comments to manipulate public opinion is nothing new.

What is making this issue so newsworthy is that the Moon administration attacked the former conservative government for doing the same thing.  The difference though is that the National Intelligence Service (NIS) chief was organizing people to leave fake comments while for this scandal a political operative for a campaign was organizing fake comments.  This dynamic may have legal differences, but in the court of public opinion it is pretty clear that the Moon administration no longer has any creditability when it comes to complaining about online discourse.

It was only a matter of time, but with the Park Geun-hye trial and sentencing out of the way, the Moon administration can next focus on Lee Myung-bak:

Former President Lee Myung-bak was indicted on bribery, embezzlement and other charges Monday, becoming the latest South Korean leader arrested or entangled in scandals at the close of their terms or after leaving office.

Lee’s indictment came three days after his successor Park Geun-hye was sentenced to 24 years in prison for a separate corruption scandal.

The Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office said in a statement that it charged Lee with taking a total of 11 billion won ($10 million) in bribes from the country’s spy agency, Samsung and others.  [Washington Post]

You can read more at the link, but he is likely going to jail as well.  Remember that Korea is not a rule of law society, but instead a rule by law.  This means those in power have enormous influence over legal proceedings.  The Korean left has long wanted to take down Lee Myung-bak because of the corruption investigation he initiated on former left wing President Roh Moo-hyun.  Roh ended up committing suicide after his corruption came to light under the investigation led by the Lee administration.

Former President Park has received more time in prison than murderers and rapists in Korea:

Former President Park Geun-hye was sentenced to 24 years in prison and 18 billion won in fine on Friday in a massive corruption scandal that toppled her from power early last year.

In a live televised trial, the Seoul Central District Court meted out the guilty verdict for the 66-year-old former leader, about a year after her arrest in late March of 2017.

Park was convicted of 16 counts of corruption, including bribery, coercion and abuse of power. Prosecutors had demanded a 30-year jail term.  [Yonhap]

Here is what the judge found her guilty of:

They include forcing conglomerates to contribute 77.4 billion won to two non-profit foundations Choi controlled; forcing Hyundai Motor Group to sign deals with Choi-controlled companies; forcing Lotte Group to pitch into Choi’s project to build a sports facility in return for a duty-free business license; forcing Posco to create a fencing team and have the Choi-controlled The Blue K take over its management; and forcing Samsung Group to fund some 1.6 billion won to a winter sports education center practically run by Choi as well as buy three horses for Choi, whose daughter Chung Yoo-ra is a dressage athlete.

“Park abused the power given to her by the people of the country and conspired with Choi to demand bribes from companies and meddle in their business decisions,” Kim said. “She abused her power as the president and received 14 billion won worth of bribes from Samsung and Lotte, and requested 8.9 billion won from SK Group.”

The court said Park received bribes worth 7.2 billion won from Samsung Group, though it cannot determine how much she kept for herself.

Park was also found guilty of abusing her power by blacklisting artists and cultural figures critical of her administration and exercising undue influence in the appointment of civil servants. She was found guilty of abusing her power as president to pressure former senior official of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, Roh Tae-kang, to step down, after he pointed out problems concerning special treatment given to Choi’s daughter. The court judged Park had also pressured three officials in the ministry who did not cooperate on blacklisting artists to step down.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

So she was convicted of taking bribes even though the prosecutors could not prove she received any bribes.  I have yet to see definitive evidence of how Park supposedly pressured these companies to donate Choi’s organizations.  Has anyone seen a definitive listing of the evidence that proves she told someone to donate money to Choi or else?

Interestingly this is what she was not convicted of:

However, the judge found Park not guilty of pressuring Samsung Electronics’ Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong to financially help Choi’s equestrian daughter, Chung Yoo-ra.  [Korea Times]

So in the end all the drama of extraditing Chung Yoo-ra back to Korea was all about nothing.

Park’s lawyers will likely appeal the ruling.  I suspect that this sentence will be greatly reduced after the appeals process takes place, which is why I think this heavy sentencing is more for domestic political consumption.  ROK Heads may remember Samsung heir Lee Jae-yong received a five year sentence for corruption and then was quietly released on appeal a few months later.  I don’t think Park will be released in a few months, but I doubt she will do 24 years in prison considering rapists and murderers don’t spend that much time in Korean jails.