Following his overwhelming victory in the Democratic United Party’s primaries earlier this month, Rep. Moon Jae-in now faces a tough vetting process over his qualifications and integrity as a potential president.

With people remembering him as the closest aide of former President Roh Moo-hyun, Moon is being called on to move out from the shadow of the late liberal leader and establish fresh leadership.

Unifying liberal candidacy with his rival Ahn Cheol-soo and regrouping his party once hit by factional strife are further challenges on his path toward the presidency, observers say.

Moon’s political foes have raised several allegations of ethical lapses.

One is that he telephoned the Financial Supervisory Service to ask it to ease its inspection of a Busan savings bank in 2003, when he served as senior presidential secretary for civil affairs.

Former Saenuri Party lawmaker Lee Jong-hyun raised the suspicion in March. Moon has denied the allegation.

Following the inspection, a law firm in Busan, which Moon headed before joining the Roh administration, obtained legal cases worth 5.9 billion won ($5.3 million) from the savings bank from 2004-2007.

Some allege that the bank chose the law firm to settle their legal matters in return for Moon’s help in easing scrutiny in 2003. Moon’s side denies this.

Critics also point to what appears to have been a sudden increase in the law firm’s business during the Roh administration. They suspect that some preferential treatment might have been given to the firm so that it could take on more profitable cases.

In 2005, revenue jumped to 4.1 billion won compared with around 1.3 billion before the Roh government was inaugurated in 2003.

Moon’s side has said that he did not work as an attorney when business jumped, and that he did not take any legal cases for six months after leaving Cheong Wa Dae to avoid any controversy.

Another allegation involves his son. Former Saenuri Party lawmaker Jeong Jin-sup alleged that Moon’s son Jun-yong got a job at the state-run Korea Employment Information Service through preferential treatment.

Jeong pointed out that the KEIS at the time was headed by Kwon Jae-cheol, Moon’s onetime subordinate at the presidential office.

Above all, one of the urgent tasks for Moon is to establish a fresh leadership and policy that is differentiated from that of the late Roh.

Associating Roh’s legacy with Moon, people still remember the last years of his presidency when housing prices were not stabilized amid deepening economic polarization.

The anti-incumbent sentiment at the time led then Grand National Party candidate Lee Myung-bak to win an overwhelming victory in the 2007 presidential election.

As Moon has emerged as the opposition’s standard bearer, attention has also been drawn to a set of corruption allegations involving Roh’s family and associates. Some argue that Moon, who served as senior civil affairs presidential secretary twice in 2003 and 2005, could have prevented the scandals.

In particular, bribery allegations implicating Roh’s elder brother Gun-pyeong remain as blemishes on Moon’s track record. The elder Roh had been mired in a set of influence-peddling cases and was later fined and sentenced to jail terms.

Concerning the corruption scandals during the Roh administration, some of the party ranks even attacked Moon, arguing that he cannot escape the shadow of Roh’s death. Roh committed suicide in 2009 as a prosecutorial corruption probe zeroed in on his family and relatives.

In his autobiography published in June, Moon said, “Cheong Wa Dae could not delve deeper into those scandals as it does not have any investigative authority. I admit that the scandals were not prevented.”

Critics also point to Moon’s changed stance on two major government projects ― the Korea-U.S free trade pact and the construction of a strategic naval base on Jeju Island ― raising concern that this indicates a possible inconsistency in his potential state management.

The two projects were initiated by the Roh administration. Moon, however, objected to them. He argued that the 2010 revision of the free trade pact undermined the principle of pursuing the national interest, and that there had been a problem in the process of forging public consensus over the naval base plan.

Since declaring his candidacy, he, however, has moved to a move positive stance on the two projects.

Apart from these suspicions and allegations from political rivals, Moon also faces a set of challenging tasks ― shoring up unity within the party once hit by factional strife and unifying candidacy with his formidable rival Ahn Cheol-soo.

In the process of the primaries, a factional rift came to a head as some argued that the group closely associated with the late President Roh dominated the party. The party also feels a sense of crisis as the largest opposition party with 128 lawmakers could fail to field its own presidential candidate in the face of professor-turned-politician Ahn.

As Ahn calls for thorough political reform and public approval as a precondition for a unified liberal candidacy, observers say Moon may carry out a sweeping revamp of his party.

In line with this, he is expected to form his campaign team focusing on integration and harmony. He says that the team will be a “melting pot” free from factional division.

By Song Sang-ho (sshluck@heraldcorp.com)