At 6:30AM this morning, Suwon District Prosecutors’ Office raided more than 10 locations in and around Seoul, most notably including the offices of controversial Unified Progressive Party (UPP) lawmaker Lee Seok Ki.
According to party spokesperson Hong Seong Kyu, who gave an emergency briefing at the National Assembly shortly after the searches commenced, “There are searches underway at various locations of UPP officials including National Assemblyman Lee Seok Ki and members of civic organizations.”
“At 6:30 this morning the Republic of Korea’s clock went back precisely 41 years,” Hong went on, explicitly seeking to link the current President Park to her father, military dictator Park Chung Hee. “Facing the drip-drip of doubts over election rigging, President Park Geun Hye has not listened to the voice of the people that says she must take responsibility for what has gone on; instead, she has pulled out the rusty knife of anti-communism and repression by the security forces.”
“The demands of the people to establish the truth about the last presidential election can never be suppressed,” Hong went on. “Stop all of the ongoing suppression at once! This will become a vicious boomerang that will come right back at the regime.”
The search was delayed at Lee’s office in the National Assembly complex by his staff, who blocked personnel from entering for an hour.
It has so far been confirmed that search warrants were enforced for Lee Seok Ki’s residence and National Assembly office, along with the residences and offices of former spokesman Woo Ui Young, Gyeonggi Province Party Chairperson Kim Heung Ryeol and vice-chairpersons Kim Geun Rae and Hong Soon Seok, Gyeonggi Progressives Alliance advisor Lee Sang Ho, Goyang-Paju Regional Director of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions Lee Young Choon, Societal Trends Research Center President Cho Yang Won, former Suwon City Council Chairperson Han Dong Geun, and former Central Party Youth Chairperson Park Min Jeung.
Commenting on the developments, one national security expert subsequently told the Daily NK that in spite of doubts over Lee and others, this would not be an open and shut case.
“Given that National Assemblyman Lee Seok Ki and the others used to do underground revolutionary activities, and that the core of those activities was to overthrow the government and form an ideal society along the lines of North Korea, I can understand the ‘conspiracy to stage a rebellion’ charge,” he said.
“However,” he went on, “from the standpoint of nulla poena sine lege, the principle that there is ‘no crime without law,’ you must clearly establish a crime, and it is hard to prove anything by just saying they ‘discussed and prepared’ a rebellion.”
