PPP expels member for hanging Japanese flag on Independence Movement Day

This March 7 file photo shows a man waving a Japanese flag at a rally calling for the removal of a statue of a girl symbolizing victims of Japan's wartime sexual slavery in Sejong, 112 kilometers south of Seoul. Yonhap

The ruling People Power Party (PPP) had one member quit the party after he was confirmed to be the man who flew the Japanese flag on a national holiday marking Korea's independence movement against Japanese colonial rule, a lawmaker said Friday.

The person, who identified himself as a PPP member in a media interview, came under fire after hanging the Japanese flag outside his apartment in the central city of Sejong, 112 kilometers south of Seoul, on March 1, a national holiday marking the country's 1919 independence movement.

"He engaged in a stunt that goes completely against the common sense of ordinary party members," Rep. Lee Chul-gyu, the PPP's secretary general, said in an MBC radio interview. "We immediately convened a meeting of the party affairs committee and … took disciplinary action and asked him to leave the party, and he immediately quit."

Lee said the party has yet to establish a screening system for its nearly 4 million non-lawmaker members. (Yonhap)