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| Ruling People Power Party acting Chairman Kweon Seong-dong sends a Telegram message to President Yoon Suk-yeol during a National Assembly interpellation session on Tuesday. The messages sent from Yoon read "our party (the PPP) is doing well" and "the party has changed after replacing the chairman who was pointing guns inwards at us." |
By Nam Hyun-woo
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| Choi Young-bum, the senior presidential secretary for public relations, takes a question from reporters during a news conference at the presidential office in Yongsan District, Seoul, Wednesday. Yonhap |
Yoon was not seen while on his way to the presidential office, where he used to answer questions from reporters, a day after his private message with Kweon was made public.
"I think it is inappropriate to disclose (President Yoon's) private text messages and let them become a matter of political interpretation," Choi said during a news conference. "I assume that the president made those comments while trying to encourage PPP acting Chairman Kweon to keep working hard."
Choi's reactions came after a photo of the messages on the screen of Kweon's smartphone at the National Assembly on Tuesday created a stir. The messages were photographed while Kweon opened his smartphone to reply to Yoon's Telegram messages. Yoon wrote, "our party (the PPP) is doing good (in the interpellation session on Tuesday), and "the party has changed after replacing the chairman who was pointing guns inwards at us."
Although he didn't specify who the chairman in question was, it was obvious that Yoon was referring to Lee, whose party membership was suspended earlier this month over allegations of having received sexual services as bribes for political favors and destroying the evidence. Kweon has been acting as the party's chief since then. Lee had been critical of Yoon's key associates in the party.
"As far as I know, the president believes the party's tasks should be addressed within the party's leadership, and has never delivered his guidelines on the party's path," Choi said. "Also, we have discussed the matter of Lee several times, but I have never heard of the president saying negative things about him."
Choi added that Yoon did not make any specific comments on the disclosed Telegram messages.
"Lee, who has the experience of serving as the party's chairman, will know what the circumstances were, and I believe he will not misunderstand the comments," he said.
A day after his Telegram messages were exposed, Kweon apologized to the public for "causing concerns due to my negligence in exposing the private conversation."
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| People Power Party acting Chairman Kweon Seong-dong vows after he apologized to the public for his Telegram messages with President Yoon Suk-yeol at the National Assembly, Wednesday. Joint Press Corps |
Lee reacted cynically. "I clearly understood the president's intention," he said in a text message sent to reporters.
Lee also wrote on Facebook, "On the island, they advertise lamb but then sell dog's meat," referring to a proverb criticizing the practice of advertising a superior product and replacing it with an inferior one at the point of sale.
The text messages generated political repercussions, because Lee, 37, is believed to have influence among men in their 20s or 30s, who played a key role in Yoon's victory in the presidential election in March.
"I believed that President Yoon would be the leader who could unite various age groups and play a role bridging different generations," Park Min-young, a PPP spokesperson, wrote on Facebook. "But now I am not sure if what I believed was right.'"
PPP supreme council member Kim Yong-tae also said in a radio interview with MBC that "we have criticized the previous administration for their failure to examine themselves, but now Yoon believes our efforts to differentiate ourselves is tantamount to 'pointing guns inwards'."
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