Category: Politics-Korea

This is what prosecutor reform looks like in South Korea, get rid of the prosecutors that investigate corruption in the ruling party:

Elite prosecutors are accusing the administration of retaliation for their investigations targeting politicians and officials close to President Moon Jae-in, with some stepping down in protest in the past week.    
   
The Ministry of Justice said Friday that Kim Nam-woo, deputy head of the Seoul Eastern District Prosecutors’ Office, recently submitted his resignation. Kim was in the midst of investigating allegations that Justice Minister Choo Mi-ae’s son was given preferential treatment, and ultimately let off the hook, after he went AWOL from the military in 2017.    
   
Kim, 51, was a top prosecutor who had served in key posts, including the head of the policy planning department within the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office and the head of the criminal department within the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office.    
   
After Choo took office in January, Kim was named the deputy head of the Seoul Eastern District Prosecutors’ Office. In his new post, he led the investigation into Choo’s son.    
   
Since January, Choo carried out three major reshuffles of the prosecution’s ranks. The latest, concerning senior prosecutors, took place on Aug. 7. Kim was left out, while three of his classmates from the Judicial Research and Training Institute who entered the program in 1997 were promoted in the latest reshuffle.    
   
“I won’t beg for a promotion,” Kim was quoted as telling other prosecutors, according to the officials within the prosecution.    
   
“Many of the prosecutors who faced political revenge for going after the powers-that-be say they carry resignation letters in their pockets to submit anytime,” one prosecutor said.  
   
Choo has repeatedly demoted prosecutors who investigated key allies of Moon, a list that notably includes Han Dong-hoon.   
   
Han, the lead prosecutor of an investigation into former Justice Minister Cho Kuk and his family for alleged academic fraud and financial corruptions, was demoted as the deputy head of the Busan High Prosecutors’ Office in January. He was further demoted in June to work as a researcher at the Institute of Justice.   

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link about the retaliation against prosecutors to include the prosecutor that uncovered the real estate speculation scheme by President Moon’s close associate Sohn Hye-won who received a jail sentence for it.

The Daily Beast has an article published about how the left-wing operative and convicted criminal, Park Jie-won has taken over Korea’s National Intelligence Service:

The old Korean Central Intelligence Agency, a fearsome tool of terror for bygone South Korean dictators, has now lost the right to spy on politicians and torture foes of the regime. Instead the agency, renamed the National Intelligence Service years ago, is morphing into an instrument for North-South Korean reconciliation.

Nothing shows the changing role of the NIS more sharply than the appointment by South Korea’s liberal President Moon Jae-in of an old-time leftist politico as NIS director. Imprisoned in 2006 for agreeing to send North Korea $500 million to bring about the first North-South Korean summit in June 2000— between then-South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and North Korea’s Kim Jong Il, father of current ruler Kim Jong Un—the 78-year-old Park Jie-won hopes to use the agency to get back in the good graces of the North Koreans.

The NIS may still engage in routine intelligence-gathering, but Park, who was Kim Dae-jung’s closest aide, envisions the agency pursuing “peace, cooperation and unification” of the two Koreas. As for his signature on an old document promising payoffs to North Korea, he called it “fake,” a forgery.

The controversy over the signature revived memories of the scandal in which Park was alleged to have signed an “agreement on economic cooperation” with North Korea before the June 2000 summit. The document states the payoffs came to $3 billion, including another $2.5 billion in long-term aid and investment, all to get Kim Jong Il to agree to host Kim Dae-jung in Pyongyang. Several months later, “DJ,” as he was widely known, won the Nobel Peace Prize for which he had been lobbying for years.

Park might say he knew nothing, but he was sentenced in 2006 to three years in prison for arranging payoffs that critics say aided and abetted North Korea’s rise as a nuclear power. Some have claimed the final total sent to North Korea amounted to far more. In any event North Korea conducted its first underground nuclear test in 2006 and has staged five more since then, most recently in September 2017.

Daily Beast

You can read more at the link, but any fair observer can conclude that all the payouts did was accelerate the Kim regime’s nuclear capabilities and made them the even more dangerous threat they are today.

With poll numbers dropping it appears this is President Moon’s way of shifting blame to his staff:

 President Moon Jae-in’s Chief of Staff Noh Young-min and all five senior secretaries of his team offered to resign on Friday, taking responsibility for recent management of administration, the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae said.

The five are Kang Gi-jung for political affairs, Yoon Do-han for public communication, Kim Jo-won for civil affairs, Kim Geo-sung for civil society, Kim Oe-sook for personnel management.

“They are offering to resign to take overall responsibility for recent situations,” said a high-ranking presidential official who is familiar with the matter.

Asked if the “recent situation” referred to the public criticism over what many people believed to be a failed real estate policy, the official did not provide a direct answer.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It appears that the Korean public is tiring of the overreaching by the ruling Korean left:

The approval rating for the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) has continued on a downward spiral as a result of botched real estate policies and the autocratic passage of controversial bills, further narrowing the gap with the main opposition Untied Future Party (UFP) to below 1 percentage point, a survey showed, Thursday.

In the poll of 1,510 adults conducted by Realmeter from Monday to Wednesday, 35.6 percent said they support the DPK, while 34.8 percent expressed support for the UFP. The approval rating of the DPK fell 2.7 percentage points from the previous week, while that of the UFP rose 3.1 percentage points. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

Apparently Representative Ryu Ho-jeong does not like dress codes. So does she think that everyone should just wear whatever they want? Should male parliament be able to show up in shorts and tank tops? What about Korean schools, should the uniform requirement be removed from there?:

A red mini dress sported by a young female lawmaker during the latest assembly session is stirring up a heated spat over what is suitable for female lawmakers to wear on duty. 

Rep. Ryu Ho-jeong of the progressive minor Justice Party drew public attention as photos of her walking down an aisle during a plenary parliamentary session Tuesday in a red wrap dress circulated online. 

As online reactions were largely divided on the fashion choice of Ryu, the youngest member of the assembly at age 28, some internet forum users launched misogynistic verbal attacks on the lawmaker. (…….)

In a Facebook post, Rep. Ko Min-jung of the ruling Democratic Party (DP) thanked Ryu for “shattering excessive rigorism and authoritarianism at the National Assembly.”

Ryu herself said the dress was meant to show her determination to fight the male dominance culture in the assembly as represented by the predominant dress code of a suit and a tie. 

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but this is just basically another example of a millennial wanting to draw attention to themselves.

Another Korean journalist is heading to jail and yet the international media doesn’t seem to even care:

Another journalist, Woo Jong-chang (우종창, 63), is jailed in South Korea after being convicted of the “crime” of “libel” for announcing “false information.”  On July 17, 2020, Judge Ma Seong-yeong (마성영) (with judges Kim Young-hwan 김영환 and Yoon Jeong-un 윤정운 on the team) of the Seoul Northern District Criminal Court sentenced journalist Woo Jong-chang to eight months in jail for libel and “Violation of the Act on Promotion of Information and Communication Network Utilization and Information Protection” and imprisoned him.  When the sentence was announced, a woman sitting in the court yelled out, “Is this a dictatorship? How can this happen?”

Judge Ma Seong-yeong stated, “As a journalist, he did not even go through the process of confirming the minimum facts and forced false information through broadcasting.” 

East Asia Research Center

I highly recommend that everyone read the whole article from Dr. Tara O at the link. If what Woo reported on his Youtube channel from a tip he received is true it would be very problematic for the Blue House.

However, could you imagine what would happen to the U.S. news media if every tip they reported on led to them being prosecuted for libel and put in jail?

Despite President Moon’s overall great handling of the coronavirus pandemic that saw his popularity rise to 70% in April, his support has sharply dropped because of the growing scandals:

One of the things that has set President Moon Jae-in apart from his predecessors is that his popularity rating has enjoyed a stable level throughout his presidency since May 2017.

But latest surveys reflect a noticeable loss of public confidence in President Moon and his administration in the past few weeks due to some glaring policy missteps, including those related to real estate.

However, the increased disappointment is not with the missteps themselves but the “two-faced” attitude and discordance between words and actions by some of the President’s key aides and ranking government officials. The disappointment stems from the fact that the Moon administration was launched under the banner of “fairness and justice.”

This hypocrisy was highlighted by the recent controversy surrounding chief of staff Noh Young-min, who belatedly followed his own recommendation he had made late last year for senior presidential aides owning more than one home to sell off all properties other than their main residence. The recommendation came in response to rising public discontent toward the government’s failure to contain soaring housing prices.

When Cheong Wa Dae announced earlier this month that the chief of staff would sell one of his two homes, the public became even more angry because the decision to sell a less lucrative apartment in Cheongju, South Chungcheong Province, was seen as a move to retain a more valuable property in Seoul’s Seocho-gu. Yoon Seong-won, presidential secretary for land, infrastructure and transport, was criticized for a similar move, trying to keep a more expensive property in southern Seoul instead of a house in Sejong City, the nation’s as-yet underdeveloped administrative capital.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but the article also mentions the Cho Kuk Scandal as another major factor of discontent that people remember. Not mentioned in the article are all the other scandals such as the Druking Scandal, the Comfort Women Scandal, the Real Estate Speculation Scandal, and various election interference scandals.

With that all said 44% for a Korean President is still not a horrible number and well above his all time low of 39% that occurred during the Cho Kuk Scandal. However, if the trend continues he could find himself back at 39% very soon.

Here is an opinion piece in the Asia Times by Jason Morgan, an associate professor at Reitaku University in Japan, that calls for the release of former President Park Geun-hye:

In late 2016, in a journalistic feeding frenzy of rumors and innuendo, Park’s close friend Choi Soon-sil was accused of Svengali-like behavior. Millions of South Koreans, deeply disturbed by the chicanery of those in high office, hit the streets. Impeachment followed, and the hysteria carried over to Park’s subsequent trial.

But do rumors and headlines translate into hard facts? Despite glaring inconsistencies in the prosecution’s case and cavalier refusals to follow due process, Park was impeached, convicted, and hit with a compound sentence of 33 years behind bars. In a country where a murderer may face 12 years, that is an astonishing punishment.

The evidence used against Park was based on media reportage, not objective proof. Her trial was held four days a week, making it nearly impossible for her defense team to prepare. Meanwhile, the media and prosecution kept up an onslaught of innuendo.

When it came to allegations of corruption, Park was convicted of “implicit solicitation.” Since there was no evidence of wrongdoing and the court was unable to prove that Park had committed any crime, the judiciary introduced the concept of implicit solicitation – which by definition means that there is no evidence.

Park has not been found to have received a single penny from the alleged corruption – a crime the prosecutor’s office has been frantically looking for ever since the 2016 scandal erupted, without success.

Asia Times

You can read more at the link, but these are all facts we have covered here before, but it is good to see them spreading to other media publications. However, with the Moon administration’s control of the Korean media and the international media’s love affair with President Moon, I suspect that Park will be languishing in prison for quite some time.