The Democratic Party of Korea has filed a criminal complaint with police against Joo Jin-woo, a lawmaker of the People Power Party, over his claim that President Lee Jae-myung had been briefed on the progress of a special counsel investigation into the National Election Commission.
In a press release issued on the 12th under the name of its legal committee, the party said it had filed the complaint with the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, citing defamation under the Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection, defamation through the assertion of false facts under the Criminal Act, and false accusation.
"Joo spread clearly false information with the intent of smearing President Lee, seriously damaging the president's reputation, and went so far as to commit false accusation by filing a complaint against President Lee based on untrue claims," the party said in explaining the purpose of the filing.
On the 30th of last month, Joo pointed to part of a cut-off line at the bottom of an image of a confidential presidential office document that Lee had posted on social media, and alleged that it amounted to "an admission that President Lee is being briefed on the investigation by the special counsel handling the election commission case."
The presidential office responded that the document was a "report on the National Police Agency's public safety situation" at Olympic Park related to a shortage of ballot papers, and had nothing to do with any investigative report from the special counsel.
The party also rebutted Joo's separate complaint, which alleged that Lee's posting of the same document on social media constituted leaking an official secret because the document was marked confidential. "The content disclosed in the document, the status of efforts to reduce voice phishing damage, is information that can and should be shared with the public, and there is no room to regard its disclosure as a leak of an official secret," the party said.
Rep. Yang Bu-nam, who chairs the party's legal committee, said, "Someone who served as a legal affairs secretary under the Yoon Suk-yeol administration could not possibly have been unaware that his own claims were false." He added, "We urge judicial authorities to impose strict punishment in accordance with the law and principle for the act of falsely smearing the president and even filing a complaint against him for political gain."
