As election ends, Han urges first lady to scale back public role

Ruling party leader Han Dong-hoon on Thursday stepped up his call for first lady Kim Keon Hee to refrain from public activities and explain multiple allegations against her, which include claims of her illegal involvement in the April 10 parliamentary elections.

Han’s remarks come a day after the conservative bloc won two of the five seats in the regional by-elections in its respective strongholds -- Busan's Geumjeong District and Incheon's Ganghwa County – as President Yoon Suk Yeol’s approval rating hit an all-time low. The victory has cemented Han’s leadership within the ruling party despite his apparent rift with Yoon himself and the pro-Yoon faction within the conservative bloc, observers say.

Stressing the need to reform the conservative bloc to regain public trust, Han said, “the first lady must halt (all of) her public activities as she promised during the presidential election,” during a morning party Supreme Council meeting.

Kim had said in December 2021, in a press conference held on the presidential campaign trail for her husband, that she plans to “dedicate herself to the role of wife even when my husband becomes the president.” The conference was held after allegations surfaced that she plagiarized her Ph.D. dissertation and inflated her resume regarding her experience at the New York University Stern School of Business.

Since then, new allegations have emerged, including that Kim was involved in a stock manipulation scheme involving Deutsch Motors, a BMW car dealer in Korea, which dates back to 2009 and 2012, and that she illegally accepted a luxury bag and interfered in the ruling party’s candidate nomination process for the April general elections.

“(Kim) must honestly explain the allegations made against her and must actively cooperate in any necessary procedures that could investigate and (get to the bottom) of such suspicions,” Han said during Thursday’s party meeting.

Han also reiterated his proposal that the presidential office carry out a personnel reshuffle in order to debunk claims that the first lady has connections with multiple officials in the presidential office and was thus able to inappropriately meddle in state affairs.

"A personnel overhaul related to first lady Kim is absolutely, urgently needed at the presidential office. (Such) personnel reshuffle would be carried out for the need to (bring about) good politics -- politics that wins people's hearts -- not to counter any wrongdoing," Han said.

Han said that the latest by-elections were a sign that the people want the government and the ruling party to "reform and change" and expressed concerns that the conservative party has been losing public support due to issues surrounding the first lady.

"As the issues surrounding first lady Kim have repeatedly eclipsed (all other political issues), our government's reform plan has failed to earn public support," he claimed.

Meanwhile, the main opposition Democratic Party on Thursday introduced a bill mandating a special counsel probe into the allegations made against the first lady, marking the third time it officially floated such legislation.

Two previous versions of the bill were scrapped after lawmakers failed to come up with enough votes to override Yoon's decision to veto them both.

On top of existing allegations that the new bill seeks to investigate, it added new claims such as that Kim solicited the aid of Myung Tae-kyun, a self-proclaimed political broker, to manipulate the results of political opinion surveys as favorable to her husband ahead of the 2022 presidential election.

Yoon and Han are set to hold a one-on-one meeting early next week, and high on the agenda are likely to be the multiple allegations against Kim Keon Hee, including her involvement in the stock manipulation scheme, her interference with the ruling party candidate nominations ahead of the April 10 general election and her acceptance of a luxury handbag.