Tag: politics

President Moon is going to have the prosecutors office that his administration controls do the investigation into the Seongnam Land Development Scandal:

 President Moon Jae-in on Tuesday ordered a thorough probe into a snowballing corruption scandal involving a close aide to the ruling Democratic Party’s presidential nominee.

Cheong Wa Dae spokeswoman Park Kyung-mee told reporters Moon instructed the prosecution and the police to “actively cooperate and do their utmost to uncover the factual truth through a swift and thorough investigation.”

This is the first time Moon has commented on the scandal that centers on allegations that the aide to Gyeonggi Gov. Lee Jae-myung was involved in allowing a little known asset management firm to make massive profits from a land development project in Seongnam, south of Seoul, when Lee was mayor of the city.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but the opposition party wants a special counsel that would be independent to do the investigation. Clearly the ruling party does not want this because using the prosecutors office to do the investigation will likely give them more control of what is uncovered prior to next Spring’s presidential election. I would not be surprised if not much of the investigation is released prior to the election unless someone leaks it.

The ruling party’s candidate for President Lee Jae-myung is doing what left wing politicians always do, promise spend a lot of money:

Gyeonggi Gov. Lee Jae-myung, named presidential candidate of the ruling Democratic Party Sunday, vowed to adopt universal basic income if elected, claiming that he would turn South Korea into the world’s first nation offering the subsidy package, even to the wealthy.

In his acceptance speech on Sunday, Lee highlighted his “basic agenda package,” which is expected to be the backbone of his economy policy if elected president. The package consists of a universal basic income plan, a basic housing program and a basic loan scheme, but has immediately sparked divided responses from onlookers for its impact on the economy and lack of resources.

The universal basic income scheme, under Lee, would provide all Korean citizens annual cash subsidies of at least 250,000 won ($209.16) from 2023. Koreans aged between 19 to 29 would start receiving an annual 1.25 million won each from 2023. 

Lee plans to ultimately raise the bottom line to 1 million won within his years in office. 

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link, but I wouldn’t mind these heavy spending proposals so much if these politicians would be honest and also explain what taxes would be raised to pay for it.

You know you don’t have much to debate when you have to play the anal acupuncturist card:

 Yoon Seok-youl, the leading opposition presidential candidate, has increasingly faced questions about superstitious or unscientific beliefs, this time over his alleged ties to an anal acupuncture specialist that he claims to have no knowledge of.

The allegation surfaced Tuesday during the sixth TV debate among presidential contenders of the main opposition People Power Party, when one of Yoon’s competitors, former Rep. Yoo Seong-min, asked him if he has met someone “known to perform acupuncture on a strange and particular area.” 

Yoon replied he had not. (…….)

Yoo’s campaign reprised the attack on Wednesday, issuing a statement asking “what is Yoon trying to hide by lying” about his relationship with the man.

Yoon’s campaign fired back: “Not only did (Yoo) turn the TV debate into a quiz show on psychics, he is now spreading lies. This attempt to damage Yoon is nothing short of shameful.”

On the video, a spokesperson for Yoon said the man had tried to approach the candidate at the event but was restrained by Yoon’s aides.

Moreover, the man in question was a regular feature not only at political events attended by Yoo, the former lawmaker, but also other political heavyweights such as the ruling Democratic Party’s presidential contender, Lee Nak-yon, minor People’s Party leader Ahn Cheol-soo and former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, according to Yoon’s campaign.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

The ruling party has been attacking the opposition party’s presidential hopeful with corruption allegations so now they are fighting back with corruption allegations themselves against the ruling party’s candidate:

Clashes between rival political parties intensified Tuesday in connection with a sprawling regional development corruption scandal, causing disruptions of a series of parliamentary audit sessions of the government amid opposition calls for an independent counsel investigation.

At the start of at least three audit sessions, lawmakers of the main opposition People Power Party (PPP) hung banners on their desks calling for a special prosecutor probe and other slogans attacking the ruling Democratic Party and its presidential hopeful Gyeonggi Province Gov. Lee Jae-myung. 

In response, DP lawmakers boycotted the sessions, accusing the PPP of trying to take political advantage of the audit. Some DP members even put up their own banners claiming that the opposition party is to blame for the scandal.

The scandal escalated over the weekend with the arrest of Yoo Dong-gyu, widely considered a close aide to Gov. Lee, on charges that he played key roles in helping a private asset management firm collect astronomical profits from a land development project in Seongnam, south of Seoul.

Lee was mayor of Seongnam at the time.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but if Gov. Lee Jae-myung is found to be some how involved in this scandal this is far more serious than the allegations being thrown at his rival former Prosecutor General, Yoon Seok-youl.

We will see in a few months if this dip in popularity translates at the election box for President:

Public support for the main opposition People Power Party(PPP) has risen to hit 40 percent for the first time in a Realmeter weekly survey.

In the poll of two-thousand-517 adults between last Monday and Friday, 40 percent of respondents said they supported the conservative main opposition, up two-point-nine percentage points from a week earlier.

Meanwhile, support for the ruling liberal Democratic Party(DP) fell point-one percentage point to 32-point-five percent. The gap between the rival parties, seven-point-five percentage points, was outside the margin of error.

KBS World

You can read more at the link.

Here we go again with the NIS reportedly meddling in another election:

An alleged power abuse and election meddling scandal linked to a leading presidential contender is taking a new turn as speculation is mounting over the possible involvement of the state-run spy agency. 

The main opposition People Power Party (PPP) insists that National Intelligence Service (NIS) Director Park Jie-won is the mastermind behind the allegations, while the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) is counter-claiming that the rival party is trying to avert blame for the issue.

Yoon Seok-youl, a former prosecutor general and now one of the most favored opposition presidential hopefuls, has been accused of pushing the now-defunct United Future Party (UFP), a predecessor of the PPP, to lodge criminal complaints against several pro-government figures ahead of the general election in April last year, in what could have been an attempt at influencing the polls. To this end, Yoon allegedly ordered high-ranking prosecutor Son Jun-sung to hand over written criminal complaints to Kim Woong, a prosecutor-turned-politician who managed the party’s election campaign at the time and was eventually elected as a lawmaker. 

The allegations were first reported by an internet-based media outlet, Newsverse, Sept. 2, after receiving information from Cho Sung-eun, a former deputy chief of the election committee of the UFP during the general election.

However, Cho has recently placed the NIS chief under suspicion, as well as herself, that they had come up with the media report in an attempt to discredit Yoon’s election campaign.

“The release date (of the Newsverse report) was not the one that Park or I wanted nor discussed,” Cho told local broadcaster SBS, Sunday. 

“It was a date that the reporter decided on.”

In the wake of her remarks, the PPP, which had been plagued by the allegation, mounted a counterattack, trying to frame the scandal as political meddling by the spy agency.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but like I said before the Moon administration will do everything they can to destroy Yoon. He is up against people who smeared their main competitor Ban Ki-moon before the last presidential election to get him to drop out.

The Moon administration continues to throw everything they can at Yoon Seok-youl whether it is true or not to smear him before the upcoming presidential election. Remember these are the same people who smeared their main competitor Ban Ki-moon before the last presidential election to get him to drop out:

The Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO) said Friday it opened a case on presidential candidate Yoon Seok-youl.    
   
“We began our probe on Yoon to investigate him for possible power abuse, divulgence of official secrets and violations of the Personal Information Protection Act and the Public Official Election Act,” the CIO said in its statement on Friday.    
   
Yoon, prosecutor general at the time of the general elections on April 15, 2020, has been accused of helping Son Jun-sung, a high-ranking prosecutor working for Yoon, share drafts of criminal complaints against journalists and political figures affiliated with the ruling Democratic Party (DP) with Kim Woong, a prosecutor-turned-politician who was managing the general election campaign for the United Future Party (UFP), a predecessor of today’s opposition People Power Party (PPP).  
   
In short, the allegation is that Yoon encouraged a high-ranking prosecutor to work with his friend in the UFP to try to smear the campaigns of DP candidates by pushing the UFP to lodge criminal complaints against DP members and their friends.  

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but hopefully Yoon is not surprised by any of this and if he is then he clearly isn’t ready to be the next President of South Korea. He is up against people that took out and jailed a sitting President largely with fake news and then went and put a prior President in jail as payback for investigating corruption of his predecessor.

Two ROK opposition candidates appear to be trying to tap into part of the male voting demographic that have been unhappy with supposed preferential treatment given to females:

Campaign pledges to abolish the gender equality ministry by two presidential contenders of the main opposition party are sparking a major backlash from in and outside the party.

Former four-term lawmaker Yoo Seong-min and three-term lawmaker Ha Tae-keung, both competing to win the People Power Party (PPP)’s ticket to run in the March 9 presidential election, pledged to dissolve the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family earlier this week as part of their campaign promises.

Posting a message on his social media account Tuesday, Yoo said, “There’s no reason to maintain a separate ministry on gender equality and family when half of the population are female and all the other government ministries are (already) related with women’s issues.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Here is the latest update on the Korean presidential race:

Former Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-youl and People’s Party Chairman Ahn Cheol-soo had their first meeting on Wednesday and agreed to work together for the opposition’s victory in next year’s presidential election.   
   
Yoon, who announced his presidential bid last month, met with Ahn, a two-time former presidential candidate in 2012 and 2017, for an almost 2 hour luncheon. According to their spokesmen, Yoon and Ahn agreed to continue their political and policy alliance.    
   
Yoon and Ahn agreed that they will work together to deter the Democratic Party’s (DP) victory in the March 2022 presidential election, their spokesmen said in a joint press briefing. They confirmed that they are rivals in good faith as well as partners.    
  

This is actually a really brilliant move by the conservative opposition party in Korea because it demonstrates that the old guard many Koreans are fed up with is transitioning power to the younger generation:

The election of a young new leader is giving a boost to the main opposition People Power Party (PPP), with it seeing the highest gains in support in years and positive signs of a potential “conservative big tent” to counter the liberal ruling bloc ahead of next March’s presidential election. 

Public attention to the rise of the 36-year-old Lee Jun-seok and his victory at the party convention is pushing the party’s support rate. According to a survey of 2,512 adults conducted last week by local pollster Realmeter, and released Monday, 39.1 percent of respondents said they supported the PPP, while 29.2 percent said were behind the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK)

Political watchers believe the PPP has succeeded in responding to the growing public calls for change and innovation in politics by electing the youngest-ever party chairman, and it is now being recognized by the public as an alternative political force that could hold the supermajority DPK in check. Even before Lee’s rise, the DPK was already losing public support due to corruption and land speculation scandals involving high-profile government officials and party members.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.