Rep. Kim Ga-ram elected to PPP's supreme council

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Rep. Kim Ga-ram elected to PPP's supreme council

Published: 09 Jun. 2023, 16:03

People Power Party youth spokesperson Kim Ga-ram, who won a seat on the party's supreme council on Friday, delivers his acceptance speech at the National Assembly in the afternoon. [JOINT PRESS CORPS]

The conservative People Power Party (PPP) announced Friday that the party's youth spokesperson Kim Ga-ram had been elected to its supreme council, replacing Rep. Tae Yong-ho who resigned from his seat on the council last month over a series of controversial remarks.

The results were announced just past 2 p.m., after party members voted via an automated phone ballot held between 11:20 a.m. and 1:20 p.m. the same day.

Kim received 381 votes out of a total of 589 ballots cast by the party's national delegates, beating out Lee Jong-bae, a member of the Seoul Metropolitan Council, and Cheon Kang-jung, a dentist-turned-politician, to claim Tae's vacated spot on the party's supreme council.

Tae, who served as North Korea's deputy ambassador to Britain prior to his defection to the South in 2016, resigned from his seat on the council after he was referred to the party's ethics committee over controversial remarks regarding the 1948-49 Jeju Uprising and a phone conversation with a presidential secretary.

The ethics committee later suspended Tae's party membership for three months.

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