Yoon meets Han amid escalating tension within ruling party

President Yoon Suk Yeol (left) speaks to People Power Party Chair Han Dong-hoon while walking to the presidential office for their meeting in Yongsan, central Seoul, Monday afternoon. (Presidential office)

President Yoon Suk Yeol met with People Power Party Chair Han Dong-hoon at the presidential office amid escalating tensions with the ruling party over allegations of state meddling involving his wife, on the same day his approval rating hit yet another low.

The meeting, requested by the ruling party chair and former justice minister, was expected to focus on recent allegations surrounding first lady Kim Keon Hee. Han, a longtime colleague of Yoon from their days as prosecutors, urged a significant reshuffle of the president's aides and suggested that Kim step back from her public role.

Rep. Park Jeong-ha, chief secretary to the People Power Party leader, told reporters Monday that Han raised the need to mitigate public sentiment toward the Yoon administration, tackle negative issues related to Yoon's wife and push for a new dialogue over the medical student admission quota.

Park, who did not attend the closed-door meeting, declined to comment on President Yoon's response to Han's proposals.

According to the presidential office, the two ruling bloc leaders held talks without formalities and agreed to fend off any efforts to threaten South Korea's Constitution.

Yoon's approval rating on Monday fell to an all-time low, as the incumbent conservative leader has been embroiled in snowballing controversies surrounding the first lady, this time due to her alleged peddling of influence in national politics.

Also, with the prosecution's back-to-back decisions to close criminal cases centered on Kim, Yoon's political enemies have accused authorities of taking an increasingly selective approach to justice.

According to Realmeter's poll of 2,510 respondents with voting rights in the third week of October, Yoon's job approval rating came to 24.1 percent, down 1.7 percentage points from the previous week, when the figure already matched an all-time low. On the other hand, 72.3 percent of respondents disapproved of the way Yoon handled his job as president, which was likewise a new high.

Realmeter noted in a press release that Yoon's political problems are "taking a turn for the worse" as the prosecution's recent decision to close Kim's criminal cases is rather inviting new political risks for Yoon.

"Now is the time to think about a breakthrough that would be impossible without any sacrifices, given the chilly public feelings and negative public view (toward the Yoon administration)," noted the pollster.

Lawmakers of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea on Monday claimed a series of prosecutorial decisions not to pursue criminal cases zeroing in on Kim despite numerous allegations -- including her involvement in a stock price manipulation scheme and her acceptance of a Christian Dior luxury bag contrary to the antigraft law -- are proof that selective justice is at play in South Korea.

The National Assembly's Legislation and Judiciary Committee, the majority of which is controlled by opposition lawmakers, issued a subpoena to Kim on Monday, as she failed to appear at the parliamentary audit as a witness.

Three lawmakers of the National Assembly are seen at a scene delivering a subpoena issued by the National Assembly at President Yoon Suk Yeol's official residence in Yongsan-gu, Seoul as first lady Kim Keon Hee failed to appear at a parliamentary audit as a witness. (Yonhap)

The move comes in sync with the Democratic Party's persistent attempts to float a bill to allow a special counsel investigation into Kim, now for a third time. Two similar bills initially passed but were vetoed by Yoon, and neither met the threshold to override the veto.

But the parliament's latest attempt to override the veto indicated an internal fissure of the ruling party. The actual number of votes against the bill in the revote session on Oct. 4 at the National Assembly amounted to 104, fewer than all 108 People Power Party lawmakers in the 300-seat National Assembly.

A revote with 200 votes in favor is required to override a presidential veto of any specific bill.

Meanwhile, revelations of the private conversation between Kim and a former political consultant for Yoon also added fuel to the decline in the president's popularity, Realmeter noted.

The consultant, Myung Tae-kyun, had allegedly sought to influence the ruling People Power Party's electorate candidate nomination process ahead of the April general election. Myung's conversation with Yoon's wife indicated that she was aware of Myung's bid to influence the nomination process, which bore no fruit as then-lawmaker Kim Young-sun dropped out in the middle of the party's process.

Myung, who ran his own company providing 81 presidential election predictions during Yoon's campaign in 2021 and 2022, was also accused of conducting presidential election forecasts while violating the Public Official Election Act.

Later on, Kang Hye-kyung, a former subordinate of Myung at his election forecast company, argued that some of the election predictions were not part of Yoon's campaigning expenses, and were later offset by first lady Kim's offer to nominate seasoned politician Kim Young-sun to represent the party in a by-election in 2022, which led to the politician's victory.

Han said in a party meeting Monday that his conservative party "will not be fooled by such a political broker."

By Son Ji-hyoung(consnow@heraldcorp.com)