Lee Jae-myung "Kim Young-joo Scores 0 for Failing to Explain Hiring Corruption... Regretful We Can't Work Together"

Lee Jae-myung, leader of the Democratic Party of Korea, said on the 3rd regarding Kim Young-joo, the former Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly who left the party and announced his intention to join the People Power Party, "It is a personal choice, but it is truly regrettable that we cannot be together."

Lee Jae-myung, leader of the Democratic Party of Korea, is conversing with Assemblywoman Yang Yi-won-young during the plenary session held at the National Assembly on the 29th. Photo by Hyunmin Kim kimhyun81@

After the founding convention of the opposition proportional representation satellite party 'Democratic Union' held at the National Assembly, Lee made these remarks to reporters.

He explained, "It seems that Representative Kim was very dissatisfied with the evaluation results," adding, "The public official ethics category is scored out of 50 points, but since he failed to provide an explanation regarding recruitment irregularities, he was deducted 50 points and ended up with a score of zero."

He continued, "This is an absolute evaluation category, not a relative one, so it appears to have had a decisive impact," and added, "The rankings were very close with differences in decimal points, and there was significant controversy over whether the recruitment irregularities were explained, but it was judged that they were not. I think this is why such a regrettable outcome occurred."

Earlier, on the 19th of last month, Representative Kim was notified by the Democratic Party's Candidate Management Committee that he was among the bottom 20% of incumbent lawmakers subject to point deductions in the primary evaluation. Feeling "humiliated," he left the party and declared his entry into the People Power Party on the same day.

Regarding the so-called 'old boys' such as former National Intelligence Service Director Park Ji-won and former Minister of Unification Jeong Dong-young running in the primaries, Lee said, "Rather than intentionally excluding anyone, it seems the Candidate Management Committee's opinion is to let the system and the judgment of the people and party members decide," adding, "There will be time to discuss this when the Supreme Council makes a resolution."