“Lee Jun-seok should be removed for attacking party members,” Ahn Cheol-soo to file a case against former party leader

Lawmaker Ahn Cheol-soo, who was the senior advisor in the election campaign for People Power Party candidate Kim Tae-woo in the by-election for chief of Gangseo-gu in Seoul, makes a speech in support of the PPP candidate at Bangsin Market in Gangseo-gu on October 4. Yonhap News

On October 12, People Power Party (PPP) legislator Ahn Cheol-soo said, “Lee Jun-seok should now be expelled” arguing that the former party leader spread fake news that Ahn said, “He’s bull####ting us,” during the by-election for the chief of Gangseo-gu in Seoul. Ahn announced that he would bring the case before the party’s central ethics committee. After the crushing defeat in the by-election, conflicts on whose responsibility it was seem to be growing into internal strife in the People Power Party.

Ahn, who was the senior advisor in the PPP candidate Kim Tae-woo’s election campaign for chief of Gangseo-gu, wrote on social media Thursday and argued that the party should expel Lee Jun-seok for “aiming the gun at his own party” and expand its politics to embrace rational groups as a way to handle the latest election defeat. He appears to have used the expression “aiming the gun at his own party,” to recall a Telegram message that President Yoon Suk-yeol sent to PPP lawmaker Kweon Seong-dong last July, in which he wrote, “Things have changed since the party leader who used to aim the gun at his own party has been replaced.”

Ahn suggested that the party take the latest defeat as an opportunity to turn a misfortune into a blessing and claimed that the party needed to resolve two issues to win in next year’s parliamentary elections. “First, we need to put the party’s battle line in order by taking disciplinary action against politicians who only attack their own party. I will report such an act by Lee Jun-seok in the Gangseo-gu election to the party’s ethics committee.”

The PPP lawmaker explained his reason claiming that Lee focused on criticizing the party rather than offer what little help he could when the party exerted its efforts in the Gangseo-gu election even though most people knew that it would be a difficult battle. He raised an issue with a remark Lee made on CBS radio on October 10. At the time, Lee said, “(If we lose in the election) It would be because of one, President Yoon Suk-yeol; two, party leader Kim Gi-hyeon; and three, Ahn Cheol-soo, who got on the campaign truck and spoke roughly yesterday,” and added, “He tried to criticize the opposition, Jin Kyo-hoon and suddenly said, ‘He’s bull####ting us.’”

Ahn Cheol-soo explained, “The truth is, during the campaign, a citizen who appeared to be a supporter of the Democratic Party of Korea, swore at me saying ‘You’re bull####ting me, ####.’ I accepted that as some rough language voiced by a voter critical of our party in the heat of the moment, and turned it into a joke saying, ‘You’re right, we are bull####ting, aren’t we?’ and laughed.”

Ahn said, “Since it is usual for the Democratic Party of Korea to spread fake news, we were prepared for it, but it was actually Lee Jun-seok who produced the initial report of fake news.” He also said, “Lee Jun-seok claims to represent the young people in their twenties and thirties and engage in new politics, but witnessing his hypocrisy in using a falsely edited clip to attack me when I’m supporting another candidate’s campaign, I thought his sexual bribery case in the past might not be a mistake after all.” The PPP lawmaker seemed to recall how the party’s central ethics committee suspended the party rights of Lee Jun-seok for six months for trying to destroy evidence related to sexual bribery allegations last July.

Shortly after Ahn’s criticism Thursday, Lee Jun-seok also wrote on social media, “He sure is going on about a lot of nonsense.”