hankyoreh

Lee Jae-myung, the leader of Korea’s main opposition Democratic Party, enters his party’s headquarters in Yeouido, Seoul, on Oct. 24 while it was being raided by prosecutors. (Shin So-young/The Hankyoreh)

South Korean prosecutors raided the headquarters of the opposition Democratic Party in Yeouido, Seoul, on Monday as part of an investigation into illegal campaign funds that’s aimed at party leader Lee Jae-myung. The raid came five days after an initial attempt was thwarted on Wednesday.

After the prosecutors executed the search warrant one day before President Yoon Suk-yeol was supposed to deliver a budget address at the National Assembly, the Democratic Party leadership declared it would boycott the address, commenting that “cooperative governance is over.”

The prosecutors are cranking up pressure on Lee by exploring allegations that Jeong Jin-sang, a close associate of Lee’s and head of the political affairs coordination office at Lee’s secretariat, accepted presents and entertainment in the past.

Prosecutors from the third anti-corruption investigation office at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office, under Kang Baek-sin, raided the office of Kim Yong, vice president of the Institute for Democracy (a Democratic Party think tank), which is on the 8th floor of the party headquarters from 2:20 pm to 4:30 pm on Monday.

Prosecutors used digital forensics to acquire electronic documents saved on the computer. The Democratic Party said that no bank account books or paper documents were taken.

The prosecutors entered the Democratic Party headquarters through the first-floor entrance around 8:40 am on Monday, when party employees were showing up for work. Security camera footage provided by the party showed prosecutors, who had been waiting before the sliding glass doors, entering on the heels of someone, apparently a party employee, who opened the doors with a key card.

The Democratic Party criticized the move as a “surprise incursion,” but the prosecutors responded that they’d “presented the warrant to maintenance workers.”

The prosecutors then waited for the arrival of Kim’s attorney before initiating the search. In a position statement on Monday, the prosecutors stressed that this was a “raid of the individual suspect’s workplace at the Institute for Democracy, which is incorporated separately, and not of the Democratic Party.”

The Democratic Party criticized the move as “political oppression of the opposition party.”

The party convened an emergency meeting of lawmakers that morning and moved to the presidential office in Yongsan for a press conference where they objected to a “prosecutorial dictatorship and new rule by the national security apparatus.” Party lawmakers met again that afternoon to confirm a boycott of Yoon’s budget address to the National Assembly, which was scheduled for the next day.

On Monday afternoon, the Democratic Party resumed comprehensive parliamentary audits at 10 standing committees in the National Assembly. The Democratic Party and the ruling People Power Party (PPP) traded barbs over the prosecutors’ investigation of illegal campaign funds in the audit by the Legislation and Judiciary Committee.

The team of investigators called in Kim Yong for a second day of questioning. Kim, who is charged with violating the Political Funds Act, has been in custody at the Seoul Detention Center since Saturday.

Investigators are focused on verifying testimony by Yoo Dong-gyu, former chief of planning for the Seongnam Development Corporation, who claimed to have made four payments adding up to 847 million won between April and August of last year at Kim’s request.

Kim has repeatedly denied those charges.

“It’s completely false to say I received 800 million won. I’m not so foolish as to ask for campaign funds for something as critical as a presidential election,” he was quoted as saying by the Democratic Party on Monday.

In related news, investigators are also closing in on Jeong Jin-sang, who, along with Kim Yong, is a close associate of Lee Jae-myung. Jeong is accused of receiving presents and attending drinking parties organized by a private company in the Daejang neighborhood during the Wirye New City development project, in 2013 and 2014.

“The claims about receiving illegal funds are fictions that aren’t worth addressing. If the prosecutors have anything else to ask me about, I’ll confidently submit to questioning,” Jeong said on Monday.

The third criminal division at the Seongnam branch of the Suwon District Prosecutors’ Office recently placed a travel ban on Jeong while it investigates allegations concerning donations to the Seongnam professional football club.

By Jeon Gwang-joon, staff reporter; Shim Wu-sam, staff reporter

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