Tag: Im Jong-seok

What is incredible is that Im is claiming this is a political prosecution against him by Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-youl when Yoon was hand selected by President Moon just back in July for the position. So how bad must the corruption be when Yoon is moving forward with this prosecution after being hand selected by President Moon and then having his deputy prosecutors replaced by the Moon administration in an effort to cover this up?:

Im Jong-seok, President Moon Jae-in’s former chief of staff, voluntarily faced the press on his way to be questioned as a criminal suspect Thursday and attacked Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-youl for conducting a politically motivated investigation of him. 

Im, who served as Moon’s chief of staff from May 2017 till January 2019, arrived at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office in southern Seoul around 10 a.m. and addressed the press before entering the building. Im was questioned by prosecutors about an allegation that top Blue House officials abused their power to influence the Ulsan mayoral election in 2018. 

The presidential office is accused of masterminding a police probe against then-Ulsan Mayor Kim Gi-hyeon of the opposition Liberty Korea Party (LKP) in order to help Moon’s friend, Song Cheol-ho, win the race. Song and 12 others were indicted on Wednesday on charges of election law violations. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but Im must be livid because he was supposed to be getting away with all this with the people President Moon hand selected in the prosecution. Before anyone starts shedding any tears for poor Im remember he is the one that led a group that tried to bomb the U.S. embassy in Seoul and once served as the bagman for the Kim regime in North Korea.

If anyone is wondering what happened to the former Blue House Chief of Staff and North Korean bagman, Im Jong-seok after he resigned, don’t worry because he was given a golden parachute of a position in the UAE:

Nearly two weeks after President Moon Jae-in let his former chief of staff go in a show of reform, the Blue House announced Monday that Im Jong-seok will return as Moon’s special advisor for the United Arab Emirates (UAE). 

Han Byung-do, former senior secretary for political affairs, was named Moon’s special advisor for Iraq. 

Blue House spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom said during a press briefing Monday that Im had strengthened mutual trust between Korea and the UAE while serving as presidential chief of staff, and that based on this, the Blue House expects him to contribute immensely to boosting Korea’s national interests in his new post as advisor for the UAE.

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

There has to be something to the current scandals that the Blue House has been denying considering that President Moon has replaced Im Jong-seok:

President Moon Jae-in on Tuesday replaced his chief of staff and two other senior secretaries in what was widely seen as a move to put behind a scandal that is apparently hurting his approval rating.
The president named Noh Young-min, currently the ambassador to China, as his new chief of staff.
Noh is a three-term lawmaker from the ruling Democratic Party who also served as a co-chair of Moon’s election camp in the 2017 presidential race.
The new chief of staff said he will work to make up for his shortcomings by listening to what others have to say.
“The fact is I am a person who falls short in many ways. That is why I am also afraid (of taking the job). I plan to make up for my shortcomings by listening. I promise to listen to anyone, about any subject and any policy,” he told reporters.
The 61-year-old will replace Im Jong-seok, also a former lawmaker of the ruling party.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but ROK Heads may remember Im Jong-seok has a prolific communist and pro-North Korean past.  You can read a detailed background about how immersed Im is in communist ideology was at this link.  Im was also less than a decade ago collecting royalties for the Kim regime.

The fact that Moon removed someone highly trusted by North Korea shows that there must be something to the accusations of domestic spying, meddling in private business affairs, and manipulating the national debt.

It has long been known by Korea watchers that President Moon Jae-in’s Chief of Staff Im Jong-seok has prolific communist and pro-North Korean past.  Over at One Free Korea, Dr. Tara O has a guest post that provides detailed background information that shows how immersed Im was in communist ideology before entering the Blue House.  What I found really interesting was how during the Roo Moo-hyun administration Im founded a group that collected royalties for the Kim regime in North Korea:

In 2005, Im Jong-seok founded and led as chairman, the South-North Economic and Cultural Cooperation Foundation (남북경제문화협력재단). The Foundation has been collecting royalties from MBC, KBS, SBS, and other TV and online broadcasters for North Korean TV footage. According to the Ministry of Unification, the foundation collected an estimated $1,876,700 over 13 years and transferred the royalties to North Korea until the Cheonan sinking in 2010. It is still collecting royalties on behalf of North Korea’s Chosun Central Broadcasting Commission, with the plans to transfer the money once the sanctions are lifted. The foundation even called the Ministry of Defense Public Affairs and demanded royalties for using the missile test footage in July 2017. North Korea does not pay for footage from South Korean broadcasts.

The foundation also has other revenue streams. One is membership and the other is education & research. It collects about 32,700,000 Won (~$30,000) on average for its annual membership. It also became a contractor to the Seoul City and Seongdong District governments, developing South-North “peace education” programs. What is interesting is that the contract with Seoul City was signed on the same day as when Park Won-soon, Seoul City Mayor, appointed Im Jong-seok as the Deputy Mayor on June 11, 2014. Im was the campaign manager for Park prior to that in 2014, and successfully led to Park Won-soon’s re-election.  [One Free Korea]

You can read much more at the link where Dr. O in painstaking detail lists all of Im Jong-seok’s communist and pro-North Korean ties.  Does anyone think that Im Jong-seok who less than a decade ago was collecting royalties to send to the Kim regime is interested in being an honest broker now between the US and North Korea?

Keep the name Im Jong-seok and his background in mind over the next year as South Korea likely moves forward with appeasement Sunshine 2.0 with the Kim regime:

I knew very little about Im Jong-seok until he became President Moon Jae-in’s chief of staff in May. All I knew was that as president of the National Council of Student Representatives, he served a prison term for orchestrating his fellow student Lim Su-kyung’s unauthorized trip to North Korea in 1989.

The council had been influenced by Kim Il Sung’s Juche idea of self-reliance and supported North Korean ideas like the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Korea, abolishing the National Security Law and achieving unification with North Korea based on a federal system. Therefore, it might be natural that some people consider the president’s chief of staff as a former Juche activist since he had been the head of a pro-North group. I thought so, too. If the public is wrong, it is up to Im, as a public official and politician, to set the record straight.

It was a surprise to me that Im responded fiercely when Juche was debated during the National Assembly’s audit of the Blue House on Nov. 6. Jun Hee-kyung, a lawmaker from the opposition Liberty Korea Party lawmaker, brought up the issue and said she saw the Blue House being dominated by Juche supporters and National Council of Student Representatives alumni.

The opposition party’s attack might have been expected, but Im questioned Jun’s motivations in the inquiry. “I don’t know how you lived during the Fifth and Sixth Republic juntas when soldiers-turned-politicians infringed democracy,” Im fired back.

But that was it. I wonder why Im let go of such a great opportunity. If he had said, “I never supported Juche and believe in liberal democracy; how can you say I support Kim Il Sung’s philosophy?,” all doubts could be cleared. But he did not.

So I traced his past and found many aspects of an emotional North Korea sympathizer.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

Also, how can anyone describe an admirer of Kim Il-sung as a "democracy activist?" https://t.co/YWy2IWpUKS
It would be accurate to say he sought to replace an authoritarian system with a totalitarian one. Left unsaid is whether he still supports the totalitarian system.

— Joshua Stanton (@freekorea_us) February 16, 2018