Yoon rallies support from Hong Joon-pyo at closed dinner meeting

The main opposition People Power Party's presidential candidate Yoon Suk-yeol held a closed-door dinner meeting with PPP lawmaker Hong Joon-pyo on Wednesday to ask for Hong's support with his election campaign.

People Power Party (PPP) lawmaker Hong Joon-pyo, left, and the party's now-presidential candidate Yoon Suk-yeol await the results of the PPP nomination race on Nov. 5 at Kim Gu Memorial Hall in Yongsan District, central Seoul. [PRESS POOL]

The main opposition People Power Party's presidential candidate Yoon Suk-yeol held a closed-door dinner meeting with PPP lawmaker Hong Joon-pyo on Wednesday to ask for Hong's support with his election campaign.

Hong announced that the dinner took place through a post on his political platform Youth Dream, where he focuses on policy remedies for large-scale unemployment and housing shortages that affect young adults and college students.

During Wednesday’s dinner, Yoon asked Hong to be part of his “one team” during the campaign period, to which Hong responded by saying he would join Yoon’s camp if the candidate “undertook measures that would attest to his administrative competence and publicly vow to sternly deal with his in-law’s corruption,” according to the lawmaker.

Hong also requested that Yoon target local by-elections taking place in Seoul and Daegu at the same time as the presidential election, which the candidate agreed to do.

The meeting follows a previous dinner the pair attended on Dec. 2, at which another individual was also present.

The PPP lawmaker, who was the 2017 presidential nominee of the Liberty Party Korea, which was the predecessor of the current PPP, ran against Yoon in the party’s autumn nomination race but finished in second place.

Hong recently expressed concerns about a series of phone calls between Yoon’s wife Kim Keon-hee and a reporter, which were made public Sunday and suggest Kim may have tried to meddle in her husband's election campaign.

Over the course of 52 phone calls made to Lee Myeong-soo, a reporter for liberal YouTube media outlet Voice of Seoul, between July 6 and early December last year, Kim suggested that Me Too scandals among liberal politicians occurred because victims were not paid enough, in one phone call with Lee. She said that conservatives paid off victims better than the liberals, which is "why Me Too doesn't happen over here [in the PPP]."

In another conversation, Kim asked for Lee's help to get her husband elected and offered him 100 million won ($84,000) to join Yoon's election campaign.

In a Sunday Facebook post he deleted shortly after uploading, Hong said he was worried about Kim’s actions being perceived as political meddling akin to that of Choi Soon-sil, the close confidante of former President Park Geun-hye, who was impeached and removed from office after Choi’s influence peddling and interference in state affairs came to light.

After deleting the post, Hong uploaded a new message where he backtracked and said he held “no opinion” on Yoon’s candidacy until March 9, the date of the presidential election.

Hong’s apparent agreement to join Yoon’s campaign comes during a time of turmoil in the candidate’s election headquarters.

Yoon disbanded his campaign leadership team on Jan. 5, but not before Kim Chong-in, known as a "kingmaker" for helping major parties win key elections, announced his resignation from the campaign after learning of the impending shake-up.

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]