Park Sung-hoon, chief spokesman of the People Power Party, delivers a commentary on current issues at the National Assembly’s press center in Yeouido, Seoul, on the 10th of last month. News1
After President Lee Jae-myung convened an anti-corruption policy meeting and called for rooting out corruption in the public sector, the People Power Party (PPP) hit back by pointing to the president’s own legal risks, calling his remarks “a textbook case of hypocrisy.”
Park Sung-hoon, chief spokesperson for the PPP, said in a statement on the 22nd, “As the public listens to these remarks, what they feel is not sympathy but stunned disbelief at the hypocrisy,” adding, “Does the president even have the standing to speak of rooting out corruption?”
Park questioned whether the president is qualified to stress anti-corruption while facing his own legal risks. “President Lee is currently standing in five trials on 12 charges across eight cases,” he said. “His very record, stained by allegations of corruption and misconduct, is itself what South Korea’s public sector and political circles must root out.”
He went on to say, “But since his election as president, all of these trials have been suspended on the grounds of the constitutional immunity from prosecution, and the clock on judicial accountability has stopped.”
Park argued, “Putting off the investigation into his own legal risks and corruption allegations while lecturing others to root out corruption, telling them ‘don’t make excuses about past practices,’ is nothing but a textbook case of hypocrisy.”
He also said, “President Lee Jae-myung and the Democratic Party are even neutralizing the prosecution in the name of ‘prosecutorial reform’ and pushing a ‘special counsel to withdraw indictments,’ erecting double, triple and quadruple shields to cover up his own crimes.” He added, “Anti-corruption slogans shouted while turning a blind eye to the judicial accountability assigned to him are nothing but mockery of the public and the rule of law.”
He further said, “The real first step in rooting out corruption in our society and establishing judicial justice is for the trials on President Lee Jae-myung’s own eight cases and 12 charges to resume without delay and to receive a fair and rigorous judgment from the courts.”
The day before, President Lee presided over the first anti-corruption policy meeting at the presidential office and urged, “There can be no ruling party or opposition, no ‘my side or your side,’ in rooting out corruption.” He added, “We need to clean this up fairly and rigorously, with clear principles and no exceptions.”