In revealed dialogue supposedly between Kim Keon Hee and Myung Tae-kyun, woman discusses party's election candidacy matters
A recently released private phone recording suggests that first lady Kim Keon Hee discussed what appears to be details of parliamentary nominations with Myung Tae-kyun, an arrested pollster and self-proclaimed political broker, who is at the center of a potentially explosive political scandal.
Weekly magazine Sisa Journal on Monday evening uploaded the recording of a phone conversation between a woman and a man, who the media outlet said was Kim and Myung.
The conversation reportedly took place at around 10:49 a.m. of May 9, 2022, a day before Yoon Suk Yeol took office as president of South Korea.
"The president-elect (Yoon) just called, and anyway, (he) told me to just push for it, and don't bring him into it," the woman supposed to be Kim said in the recording, to which the man presumed to be Myung said, "Yes, thank you. Of course."
The woman went onto say that Rep. Kwon Seong-dong and Rep. Yoon Han-hong of the ruling People Power Party — who both held seats in the National Assembly at the time — are opposing whatever they were discussing.
The man then answered, "Yes, it appears that Yoon Han-hong has been pressured to follow the president-elect's will."
The topic of discussion is claimed to be nomination of former Rep. Kim Yeong-seon, elected in the parliamentary by-election in 2022 as the sole candidate for the ruling party. There have been allegations that the president and his wife strongly pushed for her nomination, sparked after last year's media report claiming presidential couple had strongly wanted nomination of Kim.
Kim Yeong-seon was nominated by the ruling party on May 10 of 2022, a day after the alleged conversation between Myung and the first lady had taken place.
The prosecution's investigation on the so-called "Myung Gate" revealed some 280 accounts of conversations between Myung and the presidential couple, which the left-leaning Korea Center for Investigative Journalism revealed last month.
It showed Myung in 2021 sharing details of what he said would be the People Power Party's nomination process for the 2022 presidential election with Kim. Neither of them were members of the party at the time, though Yoon was.
In another text conversation that has since been revealed between the first lady and Myung, Kim said a person she referred to as "oppa" is completely dependent on Myung, saying "what does he know?" Oppa translates as older brother but is often used to affectionately refer to a man who is older, especially husbands and boyfriends.
The presidential office said that the oppa in the conversation refers to Kim's actual brother, and that it was merely a private talk between the two of them.
Myung, the head of a polling company accused of rigging the survey results on politicians' approval ratings, is suspected of working in favor of several political bigwigs of the conservative bloc. This includes yet-unconfirmed reports that his company rigged polls for the 2021 Seoul mayoral by-election in favor of Oh Se-hoon, who won the election and the subsequent election in 2022.
Oh has denied having ties to Myung.
Myung is currently under investigation on suspicion of poll rigging and interfering in the public officials' election process.
minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com
