Popular candidate in South Korean presidential election involved in real estate corruption case
2021-10-25 10:00:39Source: Rule of Law Daily
South Korea is scheduled to hold a presidential election on March 9 next year. As the election battle is in full swing, Gyeonggi Governor Lee Jae-myung, who was just elected presidential candidate of the Democratic Party of Korea’s ruling party and regarded as the popular “successor” of Moon Jae-in on October 11, is involved in a real estate corruption case. middle. The largest opposition party, the National Forces Party, called for an independent investigation of the case and urged Lee Jae-Ming to withdraw from the presidential election. Lee Jae-Ming denied being involved in the case and said that a thorough investigation of the case is a good opportunity to clarify the facts.
Therefore, whether Li Zaiming can still participate in the presidential election, and who can win the election in the end, are all drawn a huge question mark. Korean and foreign media have paid close attention to the development of the situation.
South Korea’s National Assembly opens state inspections
While the election situation was in a good mood, Lee Jae-Ming was exposed to the corruption case of the real estate development project in Dazhuang-dong, Seongnam City, Gyeonggi Province. South Korean prosecutors and police suspect that a 2015 real estate development project in Dajhuang-dong, Seongnam City, Gyeonggi Province, south of Seoul City, involved corruption. Li Zaiming was the mayor of Seongnam City at the time, and his aide Liu Donggui (transliteration) was accused of helping the asset management company “Huo Tian Da You” obtain huge profits through this project. The prosecutors also accused the “Huotian Dayou” company of bribing Liu Donggui 500 million won (1 won is approximately RMB 0.0054).
At present, everyone involved in the case, including Liu Donggui and Jin Wanpei (transliteration), the largest shareholder of “Huotian Dayou”, has denied the prosecution’s allegations. The KMT accused Lee Jae-ming of being the “mastermind behind the scenes” of the Dazhuang-dong real estate corruption case, called for an independent investigation, and urged him to withdraw from the presidential election. Li Zaiming denied any connection with this case.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in recently expressed his position on this case for the first time and ordered a thorough investigation. However, the KMT was not satisfied with Moon Jae-in’s statement, saying that Moon Jae-in’s request for the prosecution and the police to investigate the case meant that he refused to initiate an independent investigation. On October 18th, Lee Jae-Ming, as the governor of Gyeonggi Province, underwent a state inspection by the Administrative Security Committee of the Korean National Assembly, and apologized for the failure of his personnel decisions and the involvement of some of his subordinates in the Dazhuang-dong real estate corruption case.
Refused to withdraw from the election and pointed to the opposition party
As the incident continues to unfold, Lee Jae-myung said at the recent emergency press conference that he would sincerely accept the National Assembly’s inspection of the government of Gyeonggi Province, and he also emphasized to the outside world that he would not resign as governor of Gyeonggi Province, let alone give up. Own political career.
He believes that although he may have been attacked by the opposition camp during the investigation of the case, a thorough investigation of the case is also an opportunity to clarify the facts. South Korean media analysis believes that this also means that Lee Jae-Ming will not withdraw from the presidential election as the opposition parties wished.
Not only that, Li Zaiming also said that a large number of people will be invested to recover the income of the Dazhuangdong real estate development project. He even pointed his finger at the opposition camp, alleging that the son of Kuo Sang Dao, a member of the National Forces Party, had worked for the “Huo Tian Da You” company and received a severance payment of up to 5 billion won. At the same time, he also disclosed to the outside world that many Kuomintang lawmakers have received political donations that are “big fire”. As a result, Li Zaiming believes that this real estate corruption case is a coalition of the largest opposition party, the National Forces Party, and real estate interest groups. He said that the New World Party, the predecessor of the KMT, forced the Seongnam City Government to subcontract the Dazhuangdong real estate development project to private enterprises. It is the parliamentarians of the National Forces Party and the lawyers who have worked in the procuratorial organs that are recommended by the National Forces Party or have good relations with them.
The outside world generally believes that this corruption case involves the real estate sector and has touched the most sensitive nerves of the Korean people. Coupled with the involvement of the ruling party’s presidential candidate and the largest opposition party congressman, the South Korean people are paying more and more attention to the progress of the investigation of the case.
Waiting for the final results of the investigation
Although it has attracted the attention of the whole country, the direction of the Dazhuangdong real estate corruption case and whether it will bring a serious setback to Li Zaiming’s future election road still needs to wait for the final investigation results to be released.
Just looking at the changes in the current approval rating: On October 14, the general election poll released by the South Korean polling agency Realmeter showed that Lee Jae-Ming slightly beat Yoon Seok-yue with 34% approval rate, and the latter followed him with 33.7% approval rate. Later, the approval rates of the other two presidential candidates, Shen Sang-jang and An Cheol-soo, were quite different from those of the former two, which were 4.2% and 4% respectively. On October 18, the results of a poll released by the Korean Institute of Social Opinion showed that if In a one-on-one situation between the ruling party and the opposition party, the approval ratings of Yin Xiyue and Li Zaiming were 37.1% and 35.4%, respectively, a year-on-year increase of 3.9 percentage points and a decrease of 0.4 percentage points from last week.
From this point of view, when the facts of the Dazhuangdong real estate corruption case have not yet been clarified, Li Zaiming’s approval rate has indeed been affected to a certain extent. However, Lee Jae-Ming is still one of the popular presidential candidates in South Korea. In 2016, the scandal of former South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s “confidential in politics” broke out. Lee Jae-myung was once the “first person” in South Korean politics to ask Park Geun-hye to resign. In 2017, he participated in the primaries of the Common Democratic Party, which has accumulated a lot of popularity. After being formally elected as the presidential candidate of the Common Democratic Party, he emphasized changes and reforms in his speech, saying that he would make the people feel the changes. Lee Jae-Ming also promised that if he succeeds in being elected the next president of South Korea, he will “immediately implement strong real estate market reforms” to break the huge profits in the real estate market.
At present, both the Korean government and the opposition are waiting for the conclusions of the National Assembly’s national government inspection and the prosecution’s investigation into the Dazhuangdong real estate corruption case. This result will undoubtedly greatly affect the South Korean presidential election.
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