The police have determined that a disputed Twitter account that spread false election rumors belongs to the wife of Gyeonggi Province Governor Lee Jae-myung.
The cyber unit at Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency said Saturday that it will ask prosecutors early next week to indict Kim Hye-gyeong on charges of violating the Public Official Election Act.
A police official said details will not be disclosed to the media as Kim denies the charges and a legal battle is expected.
False information was posted on the Twitter account in question in April during the ruling Democratic Party’s primary race for the Gyeonggi governorship. The claim was damaging to her husband’s rival candidate.
The account also falsely claimed in late 2016 that then presidential hopeful Moon Jae-in’s son received employment favors.
The police analyzed some 40-thousand Tweets to identify the account’s owner and concluded that it belongs to the governor’s wife. [KBS World Radio]
The Moon admin's political suppression in the name of "jeokpae cheongsan" (elimination of deep rooted evil) continues. Its target #1 is Park Seung-chun, former Minister of Veterans & Patriots. He was found not guilty on 5 charges. So now they set up comttee to investigate again. https://t.co/VmhGwfmBux
Trading away our national security & that of our allies for a short-term political advantage. Which it is, because Pyongyang isn't disarming. https://t.co/YYEj7uqPwL
The Moon administration is trying to get South Korean conservatives to attend the Inter-Korean Summit later this month in Pyongyang:
The presidential office Cheong Wa Dae on Monday asked the parliamentary speaker and heads of all five political parties in South Korea to accompany President Moon Jae-in on his upcoming trip to the North.
The invitation came from Moon’s chief of staff Im Jong-seok, who currently heads a summit preparation committee.
The Moon-Kim summit is set to be held in Pyongyang from Sept. 18-20.
“The preparation committee for the 2018 Pyongyang summit seeks to invite National Assembly Speaker Moon Hee-sang and vice speakers … as special parliamentary delegates,” Im told a press briefing.
The heads of all five major political parties, including Lee Hae-chan of the ruling Democratic Party and Kim Byong-jun of the main opposition Liberty Korea Party (LKP), have also been invited.
Those invited also include Rep. Kang Seok-ho of the main opposition party, who currently serves as the chairman of the parliamentary committee on foreign affairs and unification. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but the South Korean conservatives have declined the invitation calling it a political stunt:
The LKP criticized the government’s proposal as a “political tactic.” The party’s interim chief Kim Byung-joon refused to accept the invitation. The National Assembly speaker’s office said the speaker would also not be part of the delegation.
Only the minor liberal party for Democracy and Peace and the most-progressive Justice Party accepted the invitation, alongside the DPK. [Korea Times]
President Moon needs to have his third Inter-Korean Summit hurry up and happen this month so he can get some more smiling pictures with Kim Jong-un to improve his rapidly dropping approval rating. It dropped another six points this week because of economic woes:
A new survey finds President Moon Jae-in’s job approval rating has slipped below 50 percent for the first time.
Gallup Korea surveyed one-thousand adults nationwide, out of which 49 percent of respondents said the president is doing a good job. That’s down four percentage points from last week when the figure posted a new low.
It marked the first time for the president’s approval rating surveyed by Gallup Korea to stand in the 40 percent range.
Among those who had positive opinions about Moon’s performance, 16 percent picked improved relations with North Korea as the reason for giving a positive evaluation. Some eleven percent cited Moon’s North Korea and security policies while ten percent said they think the president gives his best and works hard.
Meanwhile, 41 percent of those who had a negative view about the president’s job cited lack of progress in addressing economic and livelihood issues as the reason for their evaluation. Some eight percent pointed at inter-Korean ties and seven percent at the minimum wage hike. [KBS World Radio]
President Moon’s approval rating is still very high at 58%, but it has dropped nearly 20 points in the past three months which has to be worrying:
President Moon Jae-in’s approval rating dipped to a record low of 58 percent, the first time the president’s popularity fell below the 60 percent level since he took office in May 2017.
In a poll conducted by Realmeter between Monday and Wednesday of 1,507 adults nationwide, support for Moon declined by 5.2 percentage points to 58 percent from 63.2 percent a week earlier amid controversy over minimum wage hikes that have hurt small business owners and seemingly depressed new hiring across the country. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more at the link, but I wonder what President Moon’s approval rating will be once the Kim regime reneges on its promise to denuclearize?
Despite the sharp drop President Moon’s approval ratings remain very high:
President Moon Jae-in’s approval rating dropped sharply this week, a poll showed Thursday, amid concerns over a planned minimum wage hike that critics say is likely to further slow the local economy.
In a survey conducted by Realmeter on Monday through Wednesday, Moon’s approval rating came to 61.7 percent, down 6.4 percentage points from a week earlier.
The rate of decline was the steepest since Moon took office in May 2017, according to the local pollster. The latest reading also was the second lowest since Moon’s inauguration.
The sharp drop follows a controversial decision by the minimum wage commission to hike the country’s hourly minimum wage to 8,350 won ($7.39) from the start of next year, up 10.9 percent from the current 7,530 won.
The president apologized for what he called his government’s inevitable failure to raise the minimum wage to 10,000 won per hour by 2020. However, many, especially small and medium-sized businesses, argue the increases have already been too sharp and too frequent.
Of 1,504 adults surveyed in the latest poll, 42 percent of all respondents said the planned wage increase is too steep while another 40 percent answered the rise seemed adequate.
The ruling Democratic Party’s approval rating slipped 3.8 percentage points to 41.8 percent, marking five consecutive weeks of decline, while that of the main opposition Liberty Korea Party advanced 2.5 percentage points to 19.5 percent. [Korea Times]
Despite having a high approval rating, remember how quickly these numbers can change; former President Park once enjoyed high approval ratings as recently as 2015 when she was at 54%. She ended here her Presidency in 2017 at 5%.
The piling on of former President Park Geun-hye continues:
Former President Park Geun-hye arrives at the courthouse to attend her corruption trial in Seoul on Sept. 26, 2017, in this file photo. (Yonhap)
A Seoul court on Friday sentenced former President Park Geun-hye to eight years in prison for illegally taking off-book funds from the state spy agency and interfering in elections during her term in office.
Televised live, the Seoul Central District Court meted out the guilty verdict to the 66-year-old, who’s already serving a 24-year jail term on a string of corruption charges in a nation-rocking scandal that led to her ousting last year.
The court also ordered her to forfeit 3.3 billion won (US$2.91 million). (…….)
She’s also been indicted for interfering in the then-ruling Saenuri Party’s candidate nominations for the 2016 general elections.
But the court on Friday acquitted her of the bribery charges, ruling that the NIS provisions of its funds to Park’s office were not paid in return for any favors. [Yonhap]
So if the funds were provided by the NIS were not in return for favors then why were they providing them to former President Park? Because they have been providing the funds to past ROK Presidents as well:
The court acknowledged that it has been customary for the spy agency to provide funds to the presidential office from its own state coffers, known as the untraceable special activities fund.
The fact that the then spy chiefs had delivered the funds to Park’s Cheong Wa Dae in a fixed amount, and on a regular basis, is far from the conventional way of paying someone a bribe, which usually comes in a lump sum payment at one time. [Yonhap]
Basically what the NIS has been doing is giving the ROK President money to pay for things like cell phones and medical treatment that would not be subject to any government record keeping. However, some of her expenses with this secret fund were definitely shady:
Park allegedly squandered the taxpayer money on maintaining her private house, financing a boutique where her secret confidante Choi Soon-sil — the central figure in the corruption scandal — had Park’s clothes made and other private purposes, including massage treatment. [Japan Times]
I think the most significant thing about this ruling is that if Park was convicted of receiving money from the NIS, then former President Lee Myung-bak who has also been arrested for corruption will also get convicted for the same thing if he received NIS special activities funds.
What I am wondering is if the NIS was also making the payments to former President Roh Moo-hyun as well? The opposition party in South Korea has already claimed that the Roh administration had their own special activities fund they wanted a special counsel to investigate.
The proposed investigation largely targets key figures from the former liberal Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations of 1998-2008. It also seeks to check whether the NIS and prosecution under the incumbent government have misused their funds.
“The misappropriation of special activity funds has long been a practice, so to speak, and it is one of Korea’s representative ills,” the request reads. “We demand institutional improvements be made by addressing the suspicions through a thorough investigation.” [Yonhap]
So far the Moon administration has not allowed any investigation into the prior Roh and Kim administration’s use of special activities funds.
Former President Roh committed suicide after the Lee Myung-bak administration began an investigation into him taking bribes. There would be no legal implications if the NIS gave him money since he is deceased, but it would still be an interesting fact to know. President Roh was hugely popular with the South Korean left and current President Moon Jae-in was his chief of staff at the time. This is likely why the prior left wing administration will not be investigated.
This is also why the conservatives in South Korea consider the arrest and imprisonment of former Presidents Lee and Park as political payback for causing Roh’s suicide by exposing his corruption.
It has been a good week for President Moon Jae-in:
The ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) has swept the local elections as well as by-elections for 12 empty National Assembly seats.
According to exit polls and the vote count by midnight Wednesday, the DPK clinched 14 out of 17 governor and mayoral posts. The largest conservative Liberty Korea Party (LKP) managed to win in the mayoral and governor elections in Daegu and North Gyeongsang Province ― its traditional strongholds. Independent candidate Won Hee-ryong won the Jeju governor’s post.
The DPK overwhelmingly won in southeast regions including South Gyeongsang Province, Ulsan and Busan, exit polls showed. The party had never won elections in these regions before. The outcome means the liberal party successfully overcame deep-rooted hostilities in these areas, largely thanks to the high popularity of President Moon Jae-in. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but I have always said that President Moon may be a leftist, but he is an extremely smart leftist. Does anyone think it was just a coincidence that the Trump-Kim summit was timed to happen right before the election? Also look at how Moon buried the damaging Druking scandal by naming a special prosecutor right before the Trump-Kim summit. This timing assured that the news would be buried by coverage of the summit.
Finally the Moon administration has been able to effectively take over control of most of the major media outlets in South Korea. Unless his North Korea policies end up imploding over the next year I expect that President Moon and thus the LKP will remain popular in South Korea.
Members of the main opposition Liberty Korea Party, including the party’s chairman Hong Joon-pyo (4th from R, 1st row), rally in front of the National Assembly in Seoul on April 22, 2018, to call for an independent counsel probe into a burgeoning opinion rigging scandal involving an influential blogger with alleged ties to a ruling party lawmaker. (Yonhap)
