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| Yoon Suk-yeol of the People Power Party raises his arms while speaking to the public in front of the Starfield Hanam shopping mall in Gyeonggi Province, March 7. Newsis |
By Ko Dong-hwan
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| Kim Man-bae adjusts his mask while responding to a journalist after attending a pre-arrest suspect examination at the Seoul Central District Court, Nov. 3, 2021. Newsis |
This latest allegation has intensified the confrontation between Yoon's party and the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) over the Daejang-dong land development scandal in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province.
The PPP has been arguing that DPK presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung, who had been mayor of Seongnam from 2010 to 2018, was involved in the scandal via handing out business favors to asset management firm Hwacheon Daeyu.
With time running out before the March 9 presidential election, the new revelation produced mixed reactions from both parties on Monday. The PPP election camp shrugged it off as a lie and condemned online news outlet Newstapa for having leaked a related phone recording, with the election just around the corner. The DPK, on the other hand, called the PPP's reaction proof of Yoon's involvement. Unconfirmed allegations regarding their suspected roles in the scandal have been swirling around both Yoon and the DPK presidential hopeful.
The 2011 scandal involved a broker, identified by the surname of Cho, who made an illegal loan from Busan Savings Bank to prepare funds for an apartment project development in Daejang-dong. The evidence, in the form of a phone recording of a conversation in September 2021 between Hwacheon Daeyu's biggest shareholder, Kim Man-bae, and the former leader of the National Union of Media Workers, alleged that Yoon had deliberately kept silent about Cho and left him alone despite the allegation over the loan.
Kim has been arrested for his role in the Daejang-dong scandal, in which Hwacheon Daeyu reaped astronomical profits from its investment.
"We want to make this loud and clear, that Yoon had never colluded with anyone behind the investigation into the illegal loan scandal involving Busan Savings Bank," PPP election camp spokesperson Lee Yang-soo said, Monday. "We shouldn't entirely trust what Kim (Man-bae) told his friend. It is a total lie and isn't worth considering launching any investigation into Yoon."
The PPP election camp's policy director, Won Hee-ryong, also said on Facebook, Monday, that the revelation amounted to a "'collaborative work' against Yoon among Kim, Newstapa and the former media workers' union leader who is now an adviser to the news outlet." He also questioned why Newstapa had leaked the phone recording when the election is only two days away.
PPP chairman Lee Jun-seok also undercut the Newstapa report during the party's election camp meeting on Monday, calling it, "An irresponsible report that only spread the rumor against Yoon without confirming any facts." He argued that the leaking of the recording was part of the DPK's efforts to distort the truth by any means necessary. "The only truth people need to remember is that Lee is the main culprit behind the Daejang-dong scandal," the PPP chairman said.
The report, however, invigorated the DPK's election camp, as it supported their claims that Yoon is in fact the one behind the Daejang-dong scandal.
The party's spokesperson issued a statement on Monday, saying that the Newstapa report has revealed Yoon's major role in the Daejang-dong scandal. "Yoon and his party have been lying to the public tirelessly that Yoon never knew or met Cho. Instead, they have been incriminating Lee for what Yoon did in the scandal."
DPK spokesperson Paik Hye-ryeon also said on Monday that the Newstapa report proved why Yoon said during a presidential TV debate on March 2 that he wasn't willing to launch a special prosecutors' investigation into the Daejang-dong scandal. In the televised debate joined by Lee and Yoon, Lee repeatedly urged Yoon five times to agree to launch a special investigation into the scandal regardless of whoever gets elected the nation's next president. Yoon didn't respond to Lee's requests during that debate.
Kim Man-bae said in the recording that he had introduced Cho to former special prosecutor Park Young-soo, a friend of Yoon's, hoping that doing so would halt the prosecutors' investigation into Cho's illegal loan from Busan Savings Bank. Kim said that Yoon, then working at the Supreme Prosecutors' Office, met Cho through Park and sent the former away after "a cup of coffee," without asking any questions about the allegations against him at all. Kim said in the recorded conversation that it had been Yoon's "obvious intention to let him (referring to Cho) go," despite the allegations Cho had been facing.
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