How to defend against judicial risks

Now, DP leader Lee Jae-myung wants to transform his own lawyers into lawmakers to defend himself in the legislature.

The controversy over the Democratic Party (DP)’s lopsided nominations of candidates loyal to its leader Lee Jae-myung is being fueled by the uninterrupted victories of candidates who defended Lee and his close aides in trials over the Daejang-dong development scandal. For instance, a lawyer for Jeong Jin-sang, a close aide to Lee, in his bribery case was nominated as the candidate in a district in Bucheon, Gyeonggi, ahead of the April 10 parliamentary elections after defeating the district’s current and fourth-term representative. Another lawyer who had defended Kim Yong, a confidante of Lee, won the primary for a legislative seat representing another district in Bucheon.

A former senior prosecutor who had defended Lee in his case over the suspicious development project — and the head of the party’s judicial committee, who led a legal battle over Lee’s own judicial risks — were also picked as the DP’s candidates representing two districts in Gwangju. Those lawyers have never tended to their constituencies, yet won their candidacy thanks to their connection to the party leader. Such nominations are unprecedented. As Gwangju is the home turf of the liberal party, their entry into the National Assembly is nearly ensured. The governing People Power Party (PPP) strongly rebuked the DP leader for paying for their service as his lawyer with nominations for the upcoming election.

The most controversial nomination involves lawyer Kim Dong-a, who defended Jeong, the aide to Lee. Kim pledged to not run for a seat, but took a sudden turn to run in a northern district in Seoul. His press conference was crammed with pro-Lee party members. Kim had failed to pass the interview to narrow down candidates to three, but abruptly replaced a strong rival, who was allegedly opposed by women’s groups for his slander at the victim of a sexual violence by a former South Chungcheong governor.

But women’s civic groups also opposed the nominations of seven other candidates on similar grounds. Even though all of them became the DP’s candidates, only Kim, the former Blue House official, was removed from the three-way race. The race was a weird one, too. The DP applied a strange rule in which the winner was determined by votes by DP members from across the country (70 percent) and votes by members of the district in northern Seoul (30 percent).

The Daejang-dong case is Lee Jae-myung’s personal issue. Nevertheless, he has long been criticized for using the party to defend himself. Now, he wants to transform his own lawyers into lawmakers to defend himself in the legislature.