Parties Continue Their Bickering

Just a day before the Lunar New Year's holiday, the ruling and opposition parties bickered over the prosecution's indictment of Representative Kang Sam-jae, vice president of the Grand National Party, on Monday.

And as they did before last Chusok, the Korean thanks-giving celebration, the two camps will go into the three-day holiday attempting to shore up public support against the current political turmoil.

Kim Young-hwan, spokesman for the ruling Millennium Democratic Party, said that the prosecution's indictment of Mr. Kang shows that the case was indeed one of embezzlement of government money.

"The prosecution report verifies that the (former ruling party) embezzled money from government coffers," he said.

"Representative Kang should voluntarily appear before the prosecution for questioning and Grand National Party President Lee Hoi-chang should cooperate," the spokesman declared.

Meanwhile, Mr. Kang rebutted the prosecution's report.

"The charges that they have indicted me on are false and the truth will be revealed in court," he said.

The opposition vice president led the 1996 general election campaign headquarters for the now-defunct New Korea Party, which has evolved into the Grand National Party.

The prosecution charges that Mr. Kang received 119.2 billion won ($93.3 million) funneled by a former spy agency money manager, Kim Ki-sup, to the party.

Mr. Kim has been arrested.

The opposition party sent a public letter to the Blue House listing five demands.

It called on the ruling party to adopt a special prosecutor system to inquire into slush funds held by politicians, for the government to stop tracing financial accounts without proper authorization and to stop seeking political realignment by oppressing the opposition, as the letter put it.

The opposition party said its president, Mr. Lee, is on a solitary holiday, mulling over how to tackle the latest political quagmire.

by Lee Yang-soo