Kim Min-seok Steps Out of the Crosshairs, Demands Probe Into Han Dong-hoon Leak
Kim Min-seok, leader of the Democratic Party of Korea, on the 9th characterized the documents concerning Justice Minister nominee Kim Seung-won released by independent lawmaker Han Dong-hoon as a "cabinet leak and evidence-tampering" case and demanded an investigation into how the leak occurred, speaking at an on-site Supreme Council meeting held at the North Jeolla Provincial Office in Jeonju. "The time has come when we cannot but thoroughly verify the cabinet leak and the evidence-tampering suspicions, which came about without any will of his own," Kim said at the meeting. A "cabinet leak" refers to an incident in which documents stored in a locker or similar cabinet leak to the outside.
Rebutting the allegations raised against nominee Kim, the party leader leaned hard into prosecutorial reform, framing the case as "the final chapter in the reform of politicized prosecution." He took particular issue with how Rep. Han came into possession of the documents containing suspicions about the nominee, raising even the possibility that they had been edited in a cut-and-paste fashion. As for Rep. Han's release of the materials, Kim said, "This is an incident that could not have happened without a collaborator inside the prosecution," adding, "We must move into the stage of verifying the truth and, if there is a leaker, taking legal action against them."
Rep. Han pushed back. On Facebook, he wrote, "I have never received from the prosecution anything so much as resembling these documents," and declared, "I will take criminal action against Democratic Party leader Kim Min-seok for spreading false information." "I will hold leader Kim sternly accountable for his groundless lies," he said.
The feud over suspicions that prosecution investigation records involving nominee Kim had been leaked escalated into a legal battle. With Rep. Han filing a complaint with police against the party leader on the 10th on charges of disseminating false information, the war of words that had played out in the press has moved into criminal proceedings.
