Candidates’ mudslinging tarnishes presidential campaigns

A television screen at Seoul Station shows a news report on the conservative People Power Party's presidential candidate Kim Moon-soo saying that voting for the liberal Democratic Party of Korea's frontrunner Lee Jae-myung would lead to "monstrous, bulletproof, complete dictatorship," Sunday.

Korea’s presidential candidates and their parties are going negative to discredit their opponents rather than focusing on their own pledges, as only two days remained until Tuesday's snap presidential election.

They are highlighting their opponents' ethical issues and inappropriate remarks involving candidates’ family members as well as allegations of public opinion manipulation, with formal complaints filed to request police or prosecution investigations into these accusations.

Lee Jae-myung of the liberal Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) brought up an allegation raised by local media that a far-right group, named Rhee-Park School, formed and operated an online opinion manipulation team to massively create comments favorably to the conservative People Power Party's (PPP) candidate Kim Moon-soo.

Lee defined it as “an act of rebellion” and highlighted that the PPP “should be strictly held responsible” for the group’s possible alliance with the party's lawmakers.

“Rhee-Park School is a major criminal group that illegally posted comments and manipulated public opinion in an attempt to overturn the election result. What’s worse is that the group is closely related to the PPP,” Lee said during a campaign event in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, Saturday.

Lee Jae-myung, center, presidential candidate of the Democratic Party of Korea, encourages people to vote for him while on the campaign trail in Daegu, Sunday. Yonhap

On Friday, local media outlet Newstapa reported that Rhee-Park School, which provides history education favorable to former presidents Syngman Rhee and Park Chung-hee, has systematically led online opinion manipulation to slander Lee and support Kim. The report also raised the possibility of collusion between the group and the PPP lawmakers, including Kim.

In response, the DPK filed a complaint with the police against the group’s leader, claiming “a strong possibility that the PPP and Kim went beyond participating in the manipulation and orchestrated it.”

The PPP claimed it has “nothing to do with” the group, arguing that the claim was “the DPK’s negative tactic to cover up the recent issues involving Lee’s son and pro-DPK commentator Rhyu Si-min’s controversial remarks on Kim’s wife."

On Wednesday, Rhyu said in a YouTube channel that Kim’s wife Seol Nan-young has been “out of her mind” while accompanying Kim on the campaign trail because “being a spouse of a presidential candidate from a prominent political party is beyond what someone like Seol can handle.”

Seol, like her husband Kim, comes from Korea's first generation of labor activists in the 1970s and 1980s. She was a high school graduate unlike Kim who was a student-activist. The couple has shown an unusual trajectory of becoming hardcore conservatives afterward.

Following Rhyu's remarks, Kim and the PPP criticized Rhyu and the DPK for discriminating against people by education and gender, calling his remarks “classist and demeaning to women.”

Kim has also been wearing a T-shirt bearing the phrase "I'm proud of my wife" during campaign events since then. Rhyu later apologized.

Presidential candidate Kim Moon-soo of the conservative People Power Party speaks during a campaign event in front of COEX in Seoul, Sunday. Joint Press Corp.

Meanwhile, Kim posed negative remarks aimed at Lee, bringing up his family-related scandals.

“He (Lee) uses a corporate card, his wife is found guilty of using a corporate card and now his son is making so much noise by using all those curse words. At my household, we have nothing like that,” Kim said during a campaign rally in Hongcheon, Gangwon Province, Saturday.

Kim was referring to the court ruling that fined Lee’s wife 1.5 million won ($1,068) for using a corporate card of the Gyeonggi provincial government to pay for meals while her husband was governor in August 2021.

The PPP also brought up the issue of Lee's son, who was fined 5 million won for illegal online gambling from 2019 to 2021 and found guilty of some other charges. While the son lost 230 million won in gambling, the PPP filed a complaint with the prosecution against the family, Saturday, suspecting the parents may have funded his gambling and the son could have evaded a gift tax.

Meanwhile, Lee Jun-seok from the minor conservative Reform Party has continued his attacks on Lee Jae-myung's son, accusing him of making sexually explicit comments online.

Lee Jun-seok triggered massive criticism after he gave sexually graphic descriptions of the female body in the last TV debate. Yet he went on with the negative tactic, demanding Lee Jae-myung’s apology regarding his son’s past.

The DPK criticized Lee Jun-seok, saying “It is deplorable that he goes all in on negatives to avoid his own mistakes.”