Hong Joon-pyo "Party Member List Leak Is Unthinkable... Prosecution Must Arrest Myung Tae-gyun"

Regarding the Allegation of Party Member List Leak: "It's Absurd"
"The List Is Deleted Immediately After the Primary Election"

Daegu Mayor Hong Joon-pyo has denied claims that his presidential campaign team requested a public opinion poll from Mr. Myeong Taegyun during the 2021 People Power Party presidential primary.

On the 14th, Mayor Hong wrote on his Facebook, "Suddenly, Mr. Myeong claimed that our side conducted a public opinion poll, so I looked into it and found out that it was Choi Amu-gae from Masan, who recently joined as the head of the external cooperation team at the Daegu City Seoul Headquarters after serving as an aide to Assemblyman Kim Young-seon until recently."

Hong Joon-pyo, Mayor of Daegu [Image source=Daegu City]

Earlier, Mr. Myeong raised suspicions that an official from Mayor Hong’s presidential campaign team had commissioned an unpublished public opinion poll from the 'Future Korea Research Institute' ahead of the People Power Party presidential primary in October 2021. In an interview with CBS Radio’s 'Kim Hyun-jung’s News Show,' he said about the poll, "I helped with the business a bit. Someone related to Hong Joon-pyo’s campaign requested it," and added, "I just connected them."

In response, Mayor Hong said, "Choi voluntarily admitted that he conducted our public opinion poll at his own expense to help us during the last presidential primary, and we accepted his resignation." It is known that Choi submitted his resignation on the 11th.

He continued, "Mr. Myeong, who is also from Masan like Choi, is someone he knows well, but during the last presidential candidate primary, he did not even come near our campaign," and explained, "Although Choi acted with good intentions, because he associated with election brokers and ultimately caused misunderstandings about our side, we accepted his resignation."

Regarding allegations that the party member list was leaked from Mayor Hong’s campaign during the presidential primary, he said, "Choi himself does not remember whether he received the party member list from our side, and he also said he does not know if the public opinion poll was conducted using the list secured by Mr. Myeong," adding, "Even if we consider it generously, the party member list given to candidates was already publicly disclosed for election promotion purposes, so claims about external leakage of the party member list are groundless."

Mayor Hong emphasized, "The party member list is an 'anonymized number list,'" and "It is deleted immediately after the primary." He further asserted, "There is no illegal act, yet election broker Mr. Myeong is exposing and spreading nonsense as if our side committed illegal acts. The prosecution should promptly arrest him."