Tag: politics

President Moon needs to have his third Inter-Korean Summit hurry up and happen this month so he can get some more smiling pictures with Kim Jong-un to improve his rapidly dropping approval rating.  It dropped another six points this week because of economic woes:

A new survey finds President Moon Jae-in’s job approval rating has slipped below 50 percent for the first time.

Gallup Korea surveyed one-thousand adults nationwide, out of which 49 percent of respondents said the president is doing a good job. That’s down four percentage points from last week when the figure posted a new low.

It marked the first time for the president’s approval rating surveyed by Gallup Korea to stand in the 40 percent range.

Among those who had positive opinions about Moon’s performance, 16 percent picked improved relations with North Korea as the reason for giving a positive evaluation. Some eleven percent cited Moon’s North Korea and security policies while ten percent said they think the president gives his best and works hard.

Meanwhile, 41 percent of those who had a negative view about the president’s job cited lack of progress in addressing economic and livelihood issues as the reason for their evaluation. Some eight percent pointed at inter-Korean ties and seven percent at the minimum wage hike.   [KBS World Radio]

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?

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.

Members of the main opposition Liberty Korea Party, including the party’s chairman Hong Joon-pyo (4th from R, 1st row), rally in front of the National Assembly in Seoul on April 22, 2018, to call for an independent counsel probe into a burgeoning opinion rigging scandal involving an influential blogger with alleged ties to a ruling party lawmaker. (Yonhap)

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.

Moon decided to use the word "nodong" instead of "geunro" to refer to labor in his constitutional revision bill. "Geunro" means "diligent or faithful" labor. Working faithfully for whom? https://t.co/53OXKXpf3i

— Ha-young Choi (@Hy_Choi0826) March 25, 2018

The Korean left is likely rejoicing today with the news that they have finally gotten payback on former President Lee Myung-Bak for uncovering the corruption of former President Roh Moo-hyun:

Former President Lee Myung-bak was taken into custody by prosecutors after a local court issued a warrant Thursday night to detain him as a suspect in a criminal investigation over corruption allegations.

Lee, who served as president from 2008 to 2013, became the fourth former president to be detained on corruption charges.

He faces at least 18 charges for receiving bribes from businessmen and politicians, misappropriating secret operations funds from the country’s main spy agency and generating slush funds using a company registered under his family’s name.

After the Seoul Central District Court issued the warrant around 11:05 p.m. on Thursday, prosecutors went to his home in Nonhyeon-dong, southern Seoul, and transported Lee to the Seoul Dongbu Detention Center in Munjeong-dong, southern Seoul.

Earlier in the day, Judge Park Beom-seok reviewed the prosecution’s application for a detention warrant, which was submitted on Monday. Judge Park made the decision after reviewing documents from prosecutors and Lee’s lawyers. A hearing was not held because Lee refused to attend.

Prosecutors questioned the former president on March 14 and asked the court to issue a detention warrant for further investigation because they believed there was a high possibility of evidence destruction. Lee, they argued, might try to persuade witnesses to change their testimony.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but this could also be payback for the prison term that former Prime Minister during the Roh administration, Han Myeong-sook received for corruption.  This is just another example that politics in South Korea is a zero sum game.

It will be interesting to see what President Moon has to say about this considering that An Hee-jung was looked at as a possible successor to Moon in the next Presidential election:

South Chungcheong Province Governor An Hee-jung has been accused of repeatedly sexually assaulting his secretary over the past eight months.

During a TV interview on JTBC, a local cable channel, Monday, Kim Ji-eun who has served as An’s secretary since June, claimed that the 54-year-old assaulted her four times and frequently sexually harassed her.

He has reportedly admitted to having sexual relations with her, but insists they were consensual.

Kim said she will file a complaint with the prosecution Tuesday.

The shocking news of his behavior could bring about the end of his political career regardless of the nature of their relationship. An was regarded as one of the strongest hopefuls for the country’s next president.

“Our sexual relations were not consensual, and I’m sure he knows it,” Kim said. “I was not in a position where I could say no.”

She said there was no one that could help her.

The accusation comes amid the spread of the #MeToo movement here, which was triggered by female prosecutor Seo Ji-hyun in January.

“After the issue about the movement came into the spotlight, An appeared to be anxious,” Kim said. “On Feb. 25, he called me into his office and apologized. But then, he did it again … I thought I would never be able to get away from him at that time.”  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but I would not be surprised if this is something An has been doing for years and Kim Ji-eun just happens to be the first person to speak out against him.