A never-ending rampage of the Democratic Party

The Democratic Party (DP)’s committee aiming to attack the Yoon Suk Yeol administration for “oppressing the opposition through a dictatorship led by the prosecution” has made public the name and photo of a top prosecutor investigating the alleged stock price manipulation case involving President Yoon’s wife Kim Keon-hee. Earlier, the majority party disclosed the private information of another prosecutor looking into a case involving Kim’s brother.

After raising suspicion about the prosecutors’ promotion "in return for their investigations," the DP insisted on getting to the bottom of the two cases involving the president’s families by appointing a special prosecutor. The prosecution refuted it immediately, saying they were promoted through routine procedures. But the DP’s latest offensives sound alarms as they are apparently designed to urge DP supporters to criticize the prosecutors on cyberspace, following its earlier push to impeach the chairman of the Korea Communications Commission for “trying to suppress the opposition” and other prosecutors for “blindly helping the president.”

The DP’s moves are nothing but an attempt to shake the top law enforcement authority for its own political goals. If the prosecution’s investigations have a problem, the DP must first demand an audit of the government through standing committees. The DP had posted online the names and photos of over 20 prosecutors involved in the investigation of its leader Lee Jae-myung to encourage DP supporters to attack them.

Hard-core DP supporters may cheer such developments for now, but any malicious stigmatization backfires. Just think of the Star of David on the chest of the Jews during the Nazi’s reign of terror or the targeted attacks on opponents to the Cultural Revolution in China. Such reckless incitement of people must not be repeated.

The DP’s relentless attacks on the government has frozen the thaw on its rivalry with the governing People Power Party (PPP). The DP’s recent submissions of controversial revisions to the Broadcast Act and the Labor Act certainly require deliberations given their massive social and economic repercussions. The DP’s push to impeach a senior prosecutor investigating the suspicious remittance of $8 million to North Korea for the DP leader must be intended to punish the prosecutor for looking into dirt on its boss.

Even the former National Assembly speaker, a DP lawmakers, demanded the party ask itself if it really won a recent by-election in Seoul because it did a good job. A recent Gallup Korea poll shows a widening gap between the two parties at 37 percent versus 34 percent. We hope the DP returns to its senses before it’s too late.