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| Lee Jun-seok, former chairman of the ruling People Power Party / Korea Times file |
Presidential office declines to comment on Lee
By Kang Hyun-kyung
Lee Jun-seok, the former chairman of the ruling People Power Party (PPP), has fired off again at President Yoon Suk-yeol, alleging the president flexed his muscle behind the ruling party's decision to oust him from the party's leadership.
He likened the president's behavior to the military junta led by Chun Doo-hwan who rose to power through the Dec. 12 military coup in 1979, weeks after then President Park Chung-hee was assassinated by the then-chief of Korea's spy agency, and then declared emergency martial law nationwide to silence opposing voices.
Calling Yoon sarcastically, "the supreme one," Lee claimed in a personal statement to a judge that the president had been the one to take the initiative to oust him from the party's leadership. The former PPP chairman had filed for an injunction regarding the ruling party's decision earlier to oust him from the post. The court is expected to rule on the case as early as next week.
"If the current situation is not corrected by the court, 'the supreme one' will be tempted to more actively exercise the right to declare an emergency situation just as he did last time (when he ousted me from the party's leadership by shifting to an emergency leadership system), like Chun's new military junta that went into emergency martial law (in 1980)," Lee wrote in the statement.
Lee submitted a four-page hand-written letter to the Seoul Southern District Court to plead to the court that it accept his request for an injunction.
Lee also revealed "a secret offer" from an unnamed confidant of President Yoon that if he steps down from the leadership post, the party will help him out in the ongoing police investigation of him regarding allegations that he accepted sexual services, twice, as a bribe in return for a political favor from a now-jailed businessman and attempted to destroy the related evidence. The unnamed person is also alleged to have told Lee that he would talk to the president to give Lee the opportunity to serve as Yoon's special envoy to several different countries, according to Lee.
Lee said he received similar offers from several different people, adding that he rejected all of them because he felt they were insulting.
He then pleaded with the court to accept his request for an injunction of the ruling PPP's decision to fire him from the party's chairmanship, which came weeks after its ethics committee's decision to suspend him from party affairs for six months for his attempt to destroy evidence in the alleged sexual services and bribery investigation.
"I do hope that the court can look thoroughly into my injunction case to help me establish internal democracy for the party," he wrote.
Lee has clashed with Yoon's trusted aides since the PPP's ethics committee suspended him from the leadership post for six months, raising a conspiracy theory. He has then attacked President Yoon directly, pointing to him as the mastermind who orchestrated getting him ousted from the party.
Rep. Joo Ho-young, the interim leader of the PPP, denounced Lee for what he called inappropriate remarks. "I think Lee himself has become a dictator," the lawmaker told reporters when asked to comment on Lee's handwritten letter to the judge.
Joo was mentioned in Lee's letter. Lee alleged that Joo, who had kept a low-profile without commenting much about the contentious issues, showed overconfidence about the PPP's decision to kick the former leader out of the party, adding that what he had done was seen as an act to challenge the court's authority.
Joo denied Lee's claim, saying, "I just said that there was no procedural flaw in the PPP's decision. That's it."
The presidential office declined to comment on Lee's attack against the president. Kim Eun-hye, senior presidential secretary for public relations, told reporters that it was inappropriate for the presidential office to comment on what Lee has said.
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