Category: Politics-Korea

The PPP has once again failed to make any strong gains in the Korean parliament:

This combined photo shows officials of the main opposition Democratic Party (L), including it leader Lee Jae-myung, clap at the National Assembly in Seoul on April 10, 2024. In contrast, officials of the ruling People Power Party, including its interim leader Han Dong-hoon, look gloomy at the National Assembly in Seoul on April 10, 2024. (Yonhap)

The main opposition Democratic Party (DP) was certain to retain a majority in the National Assembly in Wednesday’s general elections in a major setback for the ruling People Power Party (PPP) and President Yoon Suk Yeol.

Contrary to TV exit polls, however, the broader opposition bloc was expected to fall short of a two-thirds majority or at least 200 seats as the PPP was expected to secure about 110 seats in the 300-member National Assembly.

With more than 90 percent of the ballots counted in 254 constituencies as of 3 a.m. Thursday, the DP was leading in 160 districts, including many in the Seoul metropolitan region, while the PPP was ahead only in 91 districts, mostly in its stronghold in the country’s southeast.

Up for grabs are 300 seats in the National Assembly, with 46 of them to be allocated to the parties according to their proportion of the vote. Of the votes cast for proportional seats, more than 60 percent have been counted.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but if President Yoon was looking for any electorial mandate for his policies from the election he clearly did not get it.

I don’t understand how this guy even thought his joke was funny in anyway?:

Former Democratic Party lawmaker Chung Bong-ju declares his candidacy for the April elections at the National Assembly on Jan. 8, 2024. (Yonhap)

The main opposition Democratic Party (DP) on Friday canceled the nomination of an ex-DP lawmaker over his past remarks ridiculing South Korean soldiers who lost their legs in a 2015 bloody land mine explosion are stirring up criticism weeks before the April parliamentary elections. 

Chung Bong-ju was selected as DP candidate for Seoul’s Gangbuk-B constituency but he has been criticized for the comments he made on a YouTube channel in 2017 about the highly publicized incident for which a South Korean probe later concluded North Korea was responsible. (….)

The panel on the YouTube channel was talking about ways that the two Koreas could use the ski resorts in the North ahead of the PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games that the South was hosting. 

Appearing as a guest, Chung said: “We have great stuff in the DMZ, don’t we? Ankle mines. We could all go into the DMZ and give out prizes. Give a set of crutches to each of those who step on the mines.” 

Chung’s remarks have come into the spotlight since he won the party primary. 

In a Facebook post Wednesday, Chung issued an apology over the comments and said he also apologized to the victims over the phone and deleted the YouTube clip. 

But the soldiers told some local media that Chung has never contacted them, much less given an apology.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

This is an example of leftists defending leftists using these so called research groups. This group in Sweden claims autocracy is returning to Korea though Yoon replaced the left wing Moon administration that sent two prior conservative Presidents and numerous journalists to jail. I guess in the leftist world view sending political rivals and journalists to jail is a sign of democracy. Will this group upgrade South Korea’s democracy ranking if Yoon follows the lead of the leftists and sends his political rivals and journalists to jail?:

Korea has experienced a “downward slope” in its democratic process since President Yoon Suk Yeol took office, according to a Sweden-based political science research institute. The regression is attributed to the government’s measures to penalize figures associated with the previous administration, its assaults on gender equality, and its undermining of freedom of expression.

The Democracy Report 2024 released Thursday by the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute at the University of Gothenburg stated that Korea scored 0.6 on the Liberal Democracy Index (LDI) and ranked 47th among 179 countries in the world for its level of democracy.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

President Yoon’s strong stance against the doctor strike has the South Korean public beginning to rally around his administration with his approval rate now at 39%:

President Yoon Suk Yeol’s rising job approval ratings in recent weeks are bolstering the ruling People Power Party (PPP) and undermining the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea’s (DPK) strategy ahead of the upcoming general elections on April 10, which sought to exploit public dissatisfaction surrounding the president and his wife.

According to a Gallup Korea poll released on Friday, 39 percent of respondents positively assessed Yoon’s performance as the president, remaining flat from a week earlier.

In Gallup Korea polls, Yoon’s approval rating plummeted to 29 percent in the first week of February but climbed steadily to 39 percent by the end of that month. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

Normally a 39.2% approval rating would be a bad thing, but for President Yoon it is actually a sign of improvement:

President Yoon Suk Yeol’s approval rating rose slightly to 39.2 percent from a week earlier, a survey showed Monday.

According to the Realmeter survey, the positive assessment of Yoon’s performance rose 1.9 percentage points from the week earlier, while the negative assessment fell 1.7 percentage points.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.

Here are some interesting comments from President Yoon on the First Lady’s handbag scandal:

President Yoon Suk Yeol said Wednesday that first lady Kim Keon Hee failed to “cold-heartedly reject” a visitor armed with a hidden camera, speaking for the first time on allegations she accepted a luxury handbag from the man in 2022.

Yoon said in an interview with KBS TV that the bag was given to her as a “political maneuver” as it was filmed with a camera hidden inside a watch and the footage was only released last year ahead of an election year.

“The fact that she was unable to cold-heartedly reject him was the problem, if one can call it a problem, and it is a little regrettable,” he said. The interview was filmed on Sunday and aired Wednesday night.

Yonhap

Here are the details on how this was a planned political setup:

Yoon had come under growing pressure to address the allegations surrounding the first lady, even as his office maintained the Christian Dior bag, valued at around 3 million won (US$2,200), was given to her by a Korean American pastor in September 2022 as part of a premeditated hidden camera trap.

The issue was seen as a liability for the ruling party ahead of the April 10 parliamentary elections, as the incident occurred after Yoon took office as president in May 2022.

Yoon said in the interview that the incident took place when the couple were still living at their private apartment unit in southern Seoul, where his wife kept an office in the basement, before moving into the new presidential residence.

He suggested the pastor visited her at the office after claiming to have had ties with her late father and insisting that they meet.

“From now on, now that we have moved into the residence, not only will such things be managed well, but I think we will have to be clear so as not to cause any misunderstandings or anxieties or concerns among the people,” he said.

You can read more at the link, but the First Lady early in the administration was still living in their private home without a staff that would normally vet and advise on visits like this. When Kim Keon-hee was given the bag she seemed surprised which demonstrates she was not expecting it and thought this was only going to be a meeting with a pastor her father supposedly knew.

The fact this camera trap was executed early in Yoon’s presidency in 2022, but released shortly before the 2024 elections shows how this was a political setup to infleunce the upcoming election. President Yoon has made it clear there is a process in place now to prevent political setups like this from happening again.

Two former Park Geun-hye administration officials have received pardons from President Yoon after they had already completed their jail sentences. However these pardons will allow them to run for public office again:

This combination of file photos shows Kim Kwan-jin, left, former defense minister, and Kim Ki-choon, former presidential chief of staff. The two officials, who served in key positions during the Park Geun-hye administration, have been included on the special pardon list on the occasion of the Lunar New Year, the Ministry of Justice said on Tuesday.

Former Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin and former presidential chief of staff Kim Ki-choon ― both of whom served under former President Park Geun-hye before her impeachment ― have been included on a special pardon list, the Ministry of Justice said on Tuesday.

The two were among the 450,000 people expected to be granted pardons and regain rights, including the right to run for public office, by President Yoon Suk Yeol on the occasion of the Lunar New Year.

Kim Kwan-jin, 74, who served as defense minister and national security adviser under Park, was convicted in 2019 of meddling in politics by ordering the military cyber command to post online comments to sway public opinion in favor of conservative politicians.

He is currently serving as vice chairman of the presidential defense innovation committee.

Kim Ki-choon, 84, who served as chief of staff to Park between August 2013 and February 2015, was found guilty in 2017 of playing his role in creating a blacklist of artists critical of the administration.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

Even though Korea’s First Lady was setup to create a political scandal, she should not have accepted the handbag and that is what President Yoon should have stated shortly after this whole issue erupted:

This photo shows first lady Kim Keon Hee sending a prayer at a Catholic church in Sorokdo island in South Jeolla Province during her visit there in November. (Presidential office)

President Yoon Suk Yeol is facing mounting pressure to clarify his stance regarding the revelation of an alleged graft case involving first lady Kim Keon Hee.

A Gallup Korea’s poll on Friday showed that 63 percent of South Korean people disapproved of Yoon’s performance in the fourth week of January, up 5 percentage points from the week before.

Yoon’s disapproval rating has hit its highest point in nine months since April 2023, when his remarks suggested that the past during Japan’s colonial occupation of the Korean Peninsula in the early 20th century, including forced labor conscription, should be left behind. His approval rating also came to 31 percent, his lowest in three months.

Controversy surrounding Kim’s alleged breach of the Improper Solicitations Act, and Yoon’s poor communication with the public, were two of the three major reasons respondents to a recent poll gave for their disapproval of Yoon’s performance, along with high costs of living.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.

It appears the whole Dior handbag scandal involving Korea’s first lady, Kim Keon-hee was a setup with a spy cam and a acquaintance giving Korea’s first lady the hand bag with her responding “Why do you keep bringing me these things?”:

Democratic Party of Korea Rep. Hwang Un-ha speaks as the controversial video footage of first lady Kim Keon Hee accepting a Christian Dior bag from a pastor is being shown in the background during a meeting of the National Policy Committee at the National Assembly in Seoul on Monday. (Yonhap)

When a YouTube video of South Korea’s first lady receiving a Dior handbag went viral last year, it initially made few waves in mainstream news media.

In the weeks before April’s general election, the footage has become a wedge that is straining relationships among People Power Party lawmakers, as well as a piece of political ammunition for the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea.

Opposition lawmakers have been raising their suspicions that first lady Kim Keon Hee violated anti-graft legislation that forbids public officials and their spouses from receiving gifts valued at one million won ($748) at a time or a total of three million in a single year from the same person. (…….)

Kim is featured in the 86-minute video for less than a minute, as the rest of the video is filled with commentaries and discussions among panels. Wearing a casual T-shirt, she asks Choi, who visited her at the headquarters of her company Covana Contents located in southern Seoul, “Why do you keep bringing me these things?”

The box of the Dior handbag is shown perched up on the coffee table between Kim and Choi next to glasses filled with water, but the video does not show Kim accepting the gift. It was revealed that Kim had accepted the gift through a statement released by the presidential office and ruling party which said the bag was “being managed and stored as a property of the government.”

The footage was filmed with a spy cam in September last year, Choi admitted through a press conference held at the National Assembly on Monday. Choi said he was able to meet Kim because he shared an acquaintance with her father.

Choi claimed that he decided to film the video to expose how Kim was abusing her power as the first lady.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.