Category: Politics-Korea

This is likely why Lee Jae-myung ran for the National Assembly and became the opposition party leader so he could get immunity from the charges he saw building against him. What is surprising about these results is that many in his own party voted in favor of his arrest:

The National Assembly voted Monday to reject the government’s request for consent to arrest opposition leader Lee Jae-myung over corruption charges by a margin of only one vote, a surprising result that shows many of Lee’s own party voted for his arrest.

The motion was voted down 139-138 with nine abstentions and 11 deemed invalid.

The result, though in line with widespread views that Lee’s main opposition Democratic Party (DP) would use its majority power to reject the request, came as a surprise because it could mean that up to 30 DP lawmakers could have cast dissenting votes.

The DP, which has 169 lawmakers in the 299-seat National Assembly, had urged its lawmakers to reject the motion, denouncing the prosecution’s attempt to arrest Lee as political revenge by President Yoon Suk Yeol against his presidential election rival.

All DP lawmakers took part in the vote. 

In order for the motion to pass, it required a majority of the Assembly members to vote, and a majority of those voting to cast their ballots in favor. In Monday’s case, at least 149 votes were needed in favor of Lee’s arrest, as 297 out of 299 National Assembly members took part in the vote. 

By law, parliamentary consent is necessary to arrest a lawmaker while parliament is in session.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but maybe someone in the Korean media just needs to “find” a tablet PC with incriminating evidence against Lee on it like the opposition did to impeach former President Park.

This is definitely a sign of how bad the political discourse in South Korea has become:

Controversy is growing over an event arranged by a left-wing civic group, which allowed participants to shoot toy arrows at photos of President Yoon Suk Yeol, first lady Kim Keon Hee and Justice Minister Han Dong-hoon. 

Critics said the event encouraged excessive hatred that is already prevalent in Korean society, noting that it should be taken seriously as even children were welcomed to participate. 

The event was part of a rally held Saturday in central Seoul by a civic group calling for the resignation of the Yoon government and for a special counsel probe into stock manipulation allegations involving the first lady. Han, who was a senior prosecutor, is a close aide of Yoon. 

“The prosecutor-turned-president has abused the prosecution’s power all over the country, threatening the country’s democracy,” said Rep. Lee Su-jin of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea, who participated in the rally.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

The Korean left are continuing their attacks on the first lady:

The office of President Yoon Suk Yeol again rejected stock manipulation allegations involving first lady Kim Keon Hee on Tuesday as the main opposition party stepped up its calls for a special prosecutor investigation.

The main opposition Democratic Party (DP) has vowed to push for a special probe into the first lady after a court last week acquitted financiers in the stock manipulation scheme involving Deutsch Motors Inc., a BMW car dealer in South Korea, citing the expiration of the statute of limitations.

The DP has long accused Kim of playing the role of a financier and having her stock account managed and used in the manipulation. 

But the court’s acquittal of the financiers makes it unnecessary to look into related suspicions related to the first lady for dealings covered between December 2009 and September 2010, a period where the statute of the limitations has expired.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but according to the Presidential office the lead investor who made 455 stock trades during this timeframe was found innocent by the court while Kim Keon-hee made only 3 trades. So the logic is how can 3 trades be considered stock manipulation when 455 trades is not?

To me this all seems like payback for the prosecutors continuing their investigation into the opposition leader Lee Jae-myung for his alleged corrupt dealings as the Gyeongi province governor.

So it was okay to investigate and jail former Presidents Park and Lee for corruption, but not okay to investigate Lee Jae-myung for arguably equal to or worse corruption:

The main opposition Democratic Party (DP) staged a large-scale rally in central Seoul on Saturday to protest against the prosecution’s widening corruption probe into its embattled leader. 

Tens of thousands of party members joined the rally, as DP leader Lee Jae-myung is currently under investigation over corruption allegations surrounding a massive development project pushed for in Seongnam, south of Seoul, when he was the city’s mayor.

During the event, Lee accused prosecutors of hampering democracy by targeting him, President Yoon Suk Yeol’s former rival in the last presidential race. 

“Prosecutors are taking major posts in the government, and they are threatening people with arrest warrants, instead of soldiers’ guns and swords,” Lee said during his closing remarks. “Politics is giving its place to violent ruling.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but this protests shows that Lee must think he is close to being charged and headed to jail.

The DPK doesn’t seem too interested in defending ROK sovereignty:

The military refuted the opposition party’s claim on Monday that South Korean drones sent to North Korea were a violation of the inter-Korean truce, claiming that the South exercised its right of self-defense.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) defended President Yoon Suk Yeol’s eye-for-an-eye response to five North Korean drones that crossed over the inter-Korean border, Dec. 26, in a clear violation of a 2018 military pact signed between the two sides.

“The border incursion by the North Korean drones was a provocative act that apparently violated the Korean Armistice Agreement, the (1991) Inter-Korean Basic Agreement and the (2018) Sept. 19 military agreement,” Lee Sung-jun, a spokesman for the JCS, told reporters. “It was a proportional response and an exercise of the right to self-defense … Article 51 (of Chapter VII) of the United Nations Charter guarantees the right to engage in self-defense, which will be investigated by the United Nations Command (UNC).”

The remarks came a day after the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) criticized Yoon for the retaliatory response it claimed was a violation of the military pact, under which the two sides agreed to cease hostile activities and take steps to build military trust.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but we all know that if the DPK still had President Moon in power they would be saying this is a great idea.

The attacks against the Korean First Lady continue. She was cleared of plagiarizing her Phd dissertation. Now her Master’s thesis is being investigated for plagiarism:

Sookmyung Women’s University launched an inquiry last month into plagiarism allegations involving first lady Kim Keon Hee’s master’s degree thesis on art education, sources said Tuesday. 

Kim has been under allegations that she plagiarized the dissertation, which she submitted in 1999 to the university’s graduate school of education for her master’s degree.

Sookmyung began a probe into Kim’s case in mid-December, an alumni association of the university said, citing a letter sent from the school. The final result is expected to be out by around mid-March if relevant regulations requiring an outcome within 90 days upon such a probe’s launch are observed.

Yonhap

Kim has already been mocked & shamed publicly and she apologized for her prior resume padding actions. What is going on here is that this is likely retaliation for the investigations into Lee Jae-myung’s wife for when her husband was governor of Gyeongi province. What I would like to see is an investigation into the thesis and dissertations of all major political figures in Korea. How widespread is this problem?

Via ROK Drop reader Korean Man comes this interesting article from Modern Diplomacy assessing that the impeachment of President Yoon next year is a possibility:

It is problematic to poke any other faults since Yoon has been running the country for a little over six months and has not had time to make any consequential decisions that could supply political ammunition against him. Blaming Yoon for the economic storm is risky as this could lead to questions about who had sowed the wind in the first place.

Technically, however, there is little to stop the Democrats from initiating the impeachment proceedings that could be announced if voted for by 200 out of 300 Members of Parliament and subsequently endorsed by the Constitutional Court. The Democrats already have 169 votes that could be beefed up to 200 by enlisting allies from other left-wing parties and Yoon’s enemies among the Conservatives like Lee Jun-seok’s faction. They have enough of their appointees in the Constitutional Court, and, as the Candlelight Vigil showed, public protests can be as effective as backdoor influence in terms of putting pressure on a public institution.

Lurking as yet another potential factor in the fray are the United States that may choose to assist in toppling President Yoon to replace him with a classic right-winger, given that the Democrats are as pro-American as the Conservatives anyway. If the United States are gearing up for a global confrontation, Washington would be better off with an amenable rather than pragmatic head of South Korean state.

Modern Diplomacy

You can read much more at the link, but it is very clear that the Democrat Party is trying to use the Itaewon crushing tragedy to attack the President with like they did the Sewol tragedy with former impeached President Park. However, they are not getting as much traction on Yoon as they hoped because his poll numbers continue to slowly rise after the tragedy. Also I am not sensing any unhappiness with President Yoon from the United States either so I don’t see any pressure on Yoon coming from that direction. As it is right now I don’t think impeachment will happen, but it is clearly the strategy I have been saying for weeks that the Democratic Party is trying to execute against President Yoon since the Itaewon crushing incident happened.

Yoon’s approval rating is still not great, but at least it is trending in the right direction and no longer in the 30’s:

President Yoon Suk Yeol’s approval rating inched up 0.1 percentage point to 41.2 percent, climbing for the second consecutive week, a poll showed Monday.

In the survey of 2,518 adults conducted from Monday to Friday last week, 41.2 percent gave a positive assessment of Yoon’s performance, while 56.6 percent gave a negative assessment, according to pollster Realmeter.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but the Korean left is going to need President Yoon’s approval rating to be much lower if they hope to try and impeach him using the Itaewon Crushing Tragedy as a pretext.