South Korea's mounting crisis over a political funding scandal took a bizarre turn yesterday when a pro-government politician said he was on hunger strike to protest against the opposition party chief's own fast.
The head of South Korea's main opposition Grand National Party, Choe Byung-yol, stopped eating on Wednesday, saying he would start again only if President Roh Moo-hyun lifted a veto on parliament's bid to name a special investigative counsel.
PHOTO: REUTERS
The president argues that more time is needed for a separate prosecution inquiry that began as a probe into some of his aides, but then widened to take in big "chaebol" conglomerates and opposition parties just months before April parliamentary elections. Roh has vowed to cut ties between politics and the chaebol.
Now the chairman of the labor committee at the Uri Party, which split from the then-ruling party in September and backs Roh, has stopped eating to highlight what he sees as the disruptive nature of the opposition protest.
"If Choe thought about the future of South Korea and the people, he should stop and return to the National Assembly," said Kim Young-dae by telephone, referring to the opposition-dominated parliament that still has 1,205 bills to vote on before this year's session ends on Dec. 9.
"My hunger protest against Choe will last one day more than Choe's," said Kim. Both men are drinking water but not eating.
South Korean politics is often tempestuous. Labor-related protests can turn violent, providing graphic images that deter potential foreign investors.
The opposition boycott of parliament could hold up voting on next year's budget for Asia's fourth-largest economy. Political tensions also do little to help the North Korea nuclear crisis.
The presidential Blue House had no comment on the hunger strikes. It said an opposition call for prosecutors to probe Roh over bribery allegations was a matter for the prosecutors.
Roh said on Wednesday he would not duck an investigation or interfere with prosecutors already probing a number of his aides.
"We have to follow democratic rules which are written in the constitution before blaming and fighting each other," he said.
A close Roh aide is under investigation for taking 1.1 billion won (US$915,000) from the scandal-tainted SK Group.
Prosecutors investigating fund-raising practices during last year's December presidential election, in which Roh narrowly upset a conservative candidate, have raided units of South Korea's two largest chaebol, Samsung Group and LG Group.
Prosecutors yesterday searched the offices of unlisted Hyundai Capital, a leasing and lending arm of the country's top carmaker, Hyundai Motor. Hyundai Capital's chairman said the raid was linked to the political probe, local media reported.
In mid-October, Roh called for a referendum on his rule and ordered the inquiry. A Blue House official said it would be hard to stick to the mooted Dec. 15 vote because of political developments.
"It looks like the vote will be delayed until the prosecution investigation into the funding scandal is over," he said.
The constitutional court said on Thursday it had narrowly rejected a complaint about the referendum from a former parliamentary speaker and civic groups.
In a further twist, prosecutors said Lee Sang-ho, a brother-in-law of ex-president Kim Dae-jung, had been arrested on charges of accepting 100 million won from a Buddhist temple in return for a promise to secure renovation subsidies.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
Filipino farmers like Romeo Wagayan have been left with little choice but to let their vegetables rot in the field rather than sell them at a loss, as rising oil prices linked to the Iran war drive up the cost of harvesting, labor and transport. “There’s nothing we can do,” said Wagayan, a 57-year old vegetable farmer in the northern Philippine province of Benguet. “If we harvest it, our losses only increase because of labor, transportation and packing costs. We don’t earn anything from it. That’s why we decided not to harvest at all,” he said. Soaring costs caused by the Middle East
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
RSS