Yoon Suk-yeol, PPP take aim at misdeeds of past administration

Politics

Published: 13 Jul. 2022, 14:59

Yoon Suk-yeol, PPP take aim at misdeeds of past administration

Kweon Seong-dong, center, floor leader and acting chief of the People's Power Party, speaks at a meeting of a new task force investigating security issues from the Moon Jae-in administration at the National Assembly in western Seoul on Tuesday. [KIM SANG-SEON]

The Yoon Suk-yeol administration and the People Power Party (PPP) are cracking down on alleged misdeeds of the previous government to deflect attention from their own declining approval ratings.

On Tuesday, the PPP expanded a task force to probe alleged mishandlings of security issues related to North Korea by the Moon Jae-in administration.

It will enlarge a task force started by the PPP last month to look into the murder by North Korean soldiers of a South Korean fisheries officials who disappeared while on duty near the inter-Korean maritime border in the Yellow Sea in September 2020. The task force described that case on July 6 as a "systematic human rights violation against an individual."

The PPP's task force for "security disturbances" in the Moon administration will investigate other questionable cases such as the forced repatriation of two North Korean fishermen in 2019.

In November 2019, two North Korean fishermen captured near the eastern inter-Korean sea border by South Korean authorities were sent back to the North even though they asked to defect. An inter-agency investigation concluded that the two sailors killed their ship's captain and 15 fellow crew members and were sent back because they were criminals and considered threats to national security. It was the first time North Koreans were forcibly repatriated by the South Korean government.

The PPP task force will also look into an incident in which the South Korean military seized a North Korean boat on July 27, 2019, after it crossed the Northern Limit Line (NLL), the de facto maritime border, into the South's waters in the East Sea. This came despite the Blue House National Security Office's instruction to return non-military boats to the North.

At the time, a Blue House senior official summoned Park Han-ki, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) at the time, to ask why he did not follow the orders.

"The security situation during the Moon administration was revealed during the probe into the attack on the fisheries official to be utterly disastrous and a mess," said Kweon Seong-dong, the PPP's floor leader and acting chairman. "It is reasonable to view that there was an organized and intentional cover-up attempt [in his death]."

Kweon said the Moon administration's handling of cases involving North Korea was "abnormal" and had to be rectified for the sake of national security.

Last month, the Defense Ministry and Coast Guard apologized for saying that the fisheries official was attempting to defect in 2020, admitting there was no evidence to support that conclusion. The apology was a reversal from the explanation given by South Korean military authorities under the Moon government, who said the official was attempting to defect to North Korea to escape a gambling debt.

The Yoon administration has signaled it could look into other ways the Moon administration handled situations involving North Korea.

Political analysts say the PPP and administration could be eager to deflect attention to the past as their own ratings slump.

Yoon's approval rating has dropped below 40 percent in recent days, lower than his predecessors at this stage in their administrations.

Yoon scored a positive approval rating of 37 percent in a Realmeter poll released Monday, while 57 percent of respondents disapproved of the way he was handling state affairs. The poll was conducted on 2,525 voters nationwide from July 4 to 8.

His approval rating has been steadily declining over the past weeks, down from 52.1 percent in a Realmeter poll from the first week of June. The most recent poll was the first time his ratings dropped into the 30s.

According to the poll, the approval rating for the Democratic Party (DP) was at 41.8 percent, slightly higher than that for Yoon's PPP at 40.9 percent.

The last time the DP was in the lead over the PPP in approval ratings was 14 weeks ago, during the Moon Jae-in administration. In a Realmeter poll from the last week of March, the DP had an approval of 41.2 percent, compared to 40.4 percent for the PPP.

Other polls including one taken by Gallup Korea last Friday show a similar drop in presidential approval ratings.

In a Rnsearch poll released Wednesday, Yoon's approval rating fell to a low of 32.5 percent. The poll was conducted on 1,045 voters from Saturday to Tuesday, and the survey showed that 63.5 percent of respondents did not approve of the way Yoon handled state affairs. It was down from an approval rating of 52.5 percent four weeks ago.

This comes after some failed ministerial appointments by Yoon and internal turmoil within his PPP after leader Lee Jun-seok's party membership was suspended for six months over a sexual bribery and cover-up scandal.

The liberal Democratic Party (DP) is accusing Yoon and the PPP of politically retaliating against the Moon government.

During the presidential campaign, Yoon left open the possibility that he could launch an investigation into the Moon administration's alleged "corruption" in an interview the JoongAng Ilbo.

Asked if he would probe the Moon administration if he won the presidency, Yoon replied at the time, "Yes. Yes. Of course, there will be an investigation."

The National Intelligence Service (NIS) last week filed criminal complaints against two former NIS chiefs from the Moon administration over the way they handled cases related to North Korea.

The NIS said it uncovered evidence that Park Jie-won, the spy agency's chief from 2020 to May, deleted intelligence reports on the fisheries official's killing without authorization in violation of the National Intelligence Service Act.

The spy agency also filed a complaint against Suh Hoon, the NIS director from 2017 to 2020, alleging that he prematurely terminated an inter-agency investigation into Seoul's 2019 repatriation of the North Korean fishermen and fabricated documents in relation to the case.

The prosecution also started reinvestigating the so-called Industry Ministry blacklist scandal, referring to allegations that the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy forced the heads of four power plants to resign in September 2017, soon after Moon took office.

In turn, Woo Sang-ho, interim chief of the DP, said in a party meeting at the National Assembly Wednesday, "It is really deplorable that they are immersed in a retaliatory investigation [...] rather than taking care of people's livelihoods and the economy." He warned the administration to "halt the investigations into the former government and president."

"A new administration in the midst of a change of government can, of course, try to differentiate itself from the previous administration for the sake of approval ratings," said Choi Jin, president of the Seoul-based Institute of Presidential Leadership think tank. "However, it has to be done in a swift and sophisticated manner, and the president himself has to show that he is concentrating on the livelihoods of the people."

BY SARAH KIM, SUNG JI-WON [kim.sarah@joongang.co.kr]