The People Power Party appointed Yoon Jae-bok, a former vice chairman of its Gyeonggi provincial chapter, as organizing committee chief for the Yongin-A district in Gyeonggi Province, pressing ahead with the pick despite an internal dispute set off by Supreme Council member Yang Hyang-ja's allegations of a flawed primary. Yang had again called for a full accounting of errors in automated response system calls and measures to prevent a recurrence, but the leadership confirmed the appointment.
The party leadership approved the appointment at a closed-door Supreme Council meeting at the National Assembly on the 19th.
The Yongin-A contest was run as a direct vote of party members, a method pushed by party leader Jang Dong-hyuk. Yoon won a runoff conducted by automated phone calls to dues-paying members, but Yang, his rival in the race, questioned the integrity of the vote, citing cases in which some dues-paying members did not receive the automated calls. She went on to demand a full review of all cases and a complete re-vote, bringing her into friction with the leadership aligned with the party chief.
At an open session of the Supreme Council that day, Yang said: "I kept the agreement and accepted the result of the primary. It was the party that nullified the runoff result and decided to hold the runoff again." She added that what she had asked for was "a thorough investigation into the automated call errors that the party itself acknowledged, and measures to prevent a recurrence."
Chief spokesman Park Sung-hoon said of Yang's objections that the party understood her to be speaking about fairness and transparency in the election process, adding that the secretary-general had given a full explanation of how the inquiry was conducted and what it found.
Friction over the disputed primary continues inside the party. The labor union representing the party's administrative staff issued a statement that day saying it hoped the issues Yang raised about the Yongin-A contest would be discussed on the basis of objective facts, and calling for the party to review its operating systems and fix shortcomings in light of the technical blocking measures by a telecommunications carrier that were identified during the race.
The union also said it could not help expressing concern over a situation in which distrust of the entire primary system was being stoked beyond the facts that had been confirmed, and urged the leadership to help resolve the concerns raised and restore trust while respecting the party's formal procedures and the established facts.
At the same meeting, the party also approved the formation of a youth housing task force under its special committee on normalizing real estate policy. Chaired by Rep. Cho Jung-hoon, the 11-member body includes Kim Han-seul, head of the party's national association of young local council members; Moon Geum-mi, a member of the party's central youth committee; Song Gun-woo, a Seoul city council member; Lee Ki-baek, a senior secretary at the National Assembly; attorney Lee Deok-hee; Lee Bo-bae of human resources management at SK Innovation; Jung Jin-woo, a responsible manager on the energy sales team at Hyundai Engineering; Choi Eui-ran, a member of Seoul's housing promotion fund management review committee; attorney Choi Chang-hoon; and Han In-ae, a student at Sungshin Women's University.
All 10 members other than the chair are young adults. The task force plans to gauge housing conditions facing younger people through on-site meetings and other activities and to draw up effective measures. Jang said at a news conference marking his first year in office that he would set up a youth housing task force under the real estate policy committee to come up with effective alternatives on youth housing.