Just a few days into their official campaigns, the top two conservative and leftist frontrunners in the upcoming South Korean presidential election ran into controversies.
According to a Gallup Korea poll released on July 3, Yoon Seok-youl, former prosecutor general under the Moon Jae-in administration, received an approval rating of 25 percent. Yoon announced on June 29 that he will run in next year’s presidential election as an opposition candidate. The poll showed that the approval rating for his leftist opponent Gyeonggi Gov. Lee Jae-myung of the Democratic Party at 24 percent.
Lee, who is often dubbed the South Korean Bernie Sanders for his various radical ideas, including adoption of the universal basic income program, announced his presidential bid on July 1. His comments made just one day after the announcement drew strong criticism from the public and especially from conservatives.
“The Republic of Korea’s establishment process was different from how other countries were established,” Lee said on July 2. “We were not able to resolve the pro-Japanese issues and those pro-Japanese people collaborated with the U.S. occupation forces and kept their governance system.” He argued that the country was not established in a “clean way.”
This is the typical view of radical leftists in South Korea who think of U.S. troops as occupation forces while seeing Soviet troops as liberating forces. This kind of view is also apparent in the latest remarks made by Kim Won-woong, head of the Heritage of Korean Independence organization and a former lawmaker. He argued that the Soviet military issued a proclamation that congratulated Korea on its independence when it entered Soviet-controlled North Korea. However, he said that when the U.S. troops entered the South, Gen. Douglas MacArthur wrote a proclamation that said they were not a liberation army but an occupation army.
Kim’s argument about MacArthur is not correct. He distorted facts to give the impression that the Soviet occupation was good but the U.S. occupation was evil. MacArthur did use the term occupation, but Kim ignored the content behind the use of the term. “Having in mind the long enslavement of the people of Korea and the determination that in due course Korea shall become free and independent, the Korean people are assured that the purpose of the occupation is to enforce the Instrument of Surrender and to protect them in their personal and religious rights,” the proclamation read.
Yoo Seung-min, a former lawmaker and presidential hopeful from the main opposition People Power Party (PPP), said he was shocked by Gov. Lee’s comments. “If he is saying that President Syngman Rhee who fought for the country’s independence was pro-Japanese and the U.S. forces that protected the Republic of Korea with our troops was an occupying army, I would like to ask him whether he will try to kick out the ‘U.S. occupation army’ from this country when he becomes president,” he added. “We cannot let people with distorted historical views run our country.”
Jeju Gov. Won Hee-ryong of the PPP asked Lee whether he is trying to say Koreans had to stand on the side of the Soviets instead of the United States. “Lee’s campaign slogan is to make a new Republic of Korea, and is he saying that we should hold hands with Russia, China, and North Korea?”
In South Korea, leftists have been using anti-Japanese sentiment to gain popularity with the public and attack conservatives by portraying them as descendants of pro-Japanese collaborators.
Gov. Lee even argued that South Korea should consider boycotting the upcoming Tokyo Summer Olympics over the inclusion of Dokdo on the map of Japan on the Olympics’ website. Dokdo Island is located in the east coast of South Korea and is under South Korean control. However, the Japanese government argues that it is under their sovereignty and calls it Takeshima.
“Japan claims that we have invaded and control the islets, and that goes directly against the spirit of the Olympics,” Lee argued. “I believe we have to consider boycotting the games despite the pressure so that [our objection] will be recorded in history.” However, he added that people should think about the athletes who have worked hard for this, and there are ways to have them attend the games aside from the national level.
Also, on July 2, conservative presidential frontrunner Yoon Seok-youl’s mother-in-law was convicted of fraud and medical law violations linked to her nursing home business and was sentenced to a three-year prison term. The 74-year-old woman, surnamed Choi, was sent directly to prison from the courtroom.
The court recognized Choi’s active participation in the fraudulent management of a nursing home she helped found with three others in 2013 despite not being a licensed medical professional.
According to the indictment, Choi established a medical foundation with business partners and spent 200 million won ($176,000) to open a nursing hospital in Paju, Gyeonggi, in November 2012. Despite the facility being registered as a nursing home rather than a nursing hospital — and therefore not governed by the Medical Service Act — it illegitimately received about 2.29 billion won from the National Health Insurance Service over a span of two years beginning in May 2013, according to prosecutors.
Yoon has been considered as a symbol of justice among leftists in South Korea for his role in indicting former conservative presidents Park Geun-hye and Lee Myung-bak. Now, conservatives see him as a symbol of justice fighting against the Moon Jae-in administration by investigating his allies, including former Justice Minister Cho Kuk and his family members, while he was in office.
Politicians from the ruling Democratic Party attacked Yoon by saying that he could have provided benefits to his mother-in-law while he was a prosecutor. She was not indicted during the initial investigation in 2015 but was indicted after last year’s reinvestigation.
Lee Jun-seok, the head of the PPP, said South Korea is a country that does not have a ‘guilt by association’ system and that there is no reason to block him from joining the party. Some lawmakers from the PPP also showed their support for Yoon by pointing out the fact that he married in his 50s and no one at that age would verify what their mother-in-law does.
