Category: Politics-Korea

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.

Yoon Seok-youl may be interested in bringing U.S. tactical nukes back to South Korea, but does the U.S. want to do this? If the U.S. military needs to use nuclear weapons in response to a North Korean nuclear attack it seems a submarine would be just as effective?:

Yoon Seok-youl, the leading opposition presidential contender, said Wednesday he will demand the United States redeploy its tactical nuclear weapons here and have nuclear sharing with South Korea if national security is threatened by North Korea’s nukes and missiles.

Unveiling 11 election pledges on diplomacy and security issues, former Prosecutor-General Yoon said he will make efforts to strengthen the Seoul-Washington alliance to deter the North’s evolving nuclear and missile capabilities.

Yoon of the main opposition People Power Party (PPP) said he plans to seek consultation with the U.S. over the process to bring in U.S. nuclear strategic assets, such as intercontinental ballistic missiles, when emergency situations occur on the Korean Peninsula.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

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.

The Moon administration as expected is moving forward with attempting to tarnish former Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-youl before the upcoming Presidential election:

A state anti-corruption investigative agency will question a senior prosecutor this week as a witness for its probe into Yoon Seok-youl, a former prosecutor general and one of the leading presidential hopefuls, over abuse of power allegations, sources said Sunday, three months after the probe began.

The Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO) will call in Lim Eun-jeong, a prosecutor in charge of inspection affairs at the Ministry of Justice, Wednesday for questioning into allegations Yoon abused his power as a prosecutor general to interfere with an investigation by prosecutors on a high-profile criminal case involving former Prime Minister Han Myeong-sook.

Yoon was booked in June for allegedly hindering the probe to protect the prosecutors accused of forcing prison inmates to make false testimonies against Han in 2011 and helping them evade indictment.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but this is clearly an attempt to tarnish Yoon before the Presidential election and payback for going after a Korean left favorite, Han Myeong-sook who was the first female Prime Minister of Korea. She was jailed for bribery which the left claims was politically motivated.

Well at least he did not pull an Obama:

Busan Mayor Park Heong-joon violated social distancing rules in June by attending a dinner party with more than four people hosted by Lee Woon-kyung, wife of Namyang Dairy Products Chairman Hong Won-sik, according to the police, Wednesday. 

Lee held the party at her home in Seoul on June 19, with 14 people attending, including herself. At the time, a ban on private gatherings of more than four people was in place in the Seoul metropolitan area as a part of the government’s social distancing measures to control the spread of the coronavirus.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but it is amazing these people in power that keep flaunting their own COVID protocols.

Why don’t they just knock down the old school and make an entirely new building? That seems easier than building on top of an old school:

Presidential contenders have come up with various ideas to increase the housing supply and prevent further price escalation. 

The most sensational among them so far is former Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun’s plan to build apartments on top of school buildings, a plan which is drawing huge attention ― mostly mockery and sarcasm. 

Chung, a presidential hopeful of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), announced the plan to redevelop old schools and turn them into residential-school complexes.

“On the sites of public schools, we could erect a building where the first to fifth floors are used as a school and the sixth and above floors as residential spaces so that parents and students can live there while the children attend the school,” Chung said during a press conference at the National Assembly, Tuesday.

Through this plan, he pledged to provide 200,000 homes in Seoul alone, as a part of his promise to provide 2.8 million homes nationwide through various projects in both the public and private sectors during his term if he is elected president next March.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

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.