Opposition Party Claims NIS Involved in Attacks to Discredit Yoon Seok-youl
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.
DPK Commie party calling in the big guns now.
Mud slinging among political candidates and potential presidential candidates, like other parts of the world, is nothing new here.
Of course, here in Korea, the usual scripts are;
1. Allegations of corruption usually buying property at dirt cheap prices and reselling them at a huge profit based on “insider information”
2. Favoritism usually getting cushy jobs for their children or exemption from military service or cushy military postings for their sons.
3. Abuse of power(may overlap with nos 1 and 2)
4. Policy mistakes
5. Whatever the politician said in public
Allegations against the former General Prosecutors seems to be following the usual script, and since the guy packaged himself as a “righteous dude with a sense of duty taking on the corrupt Moon regime” expect more attacks from nos 1 to 3 so that the DPK can damage his packaging and cut him down in the eyes of the voters.
So, the above I’m afraid ain’t that surprising unless of course there is a sex scandal or the former GP throws in the towel.
TOK, in Korea, the losers of these arguments not only lose elections, they go to prison (or commit suicide). It is not quite as innocuous a picture as you wish to paint.
And the masks are slipping…