Lee sentenced to 4 months in prison in first-instance jury trial

Lee Hwa-young, former vice governor for peace affairs of Gyeonggi Province [Yonhap]
Lee Hwa-young, former vice governor for peace affairs of Gyeonggi Province [Yonhap]

The People Power Party and independent lawmaker Han Dong-hoon lashed out after Lee Hwa-young, former vice governor for peace affairs of Gyeonggi Province, was sentenced to four months in prison on perjury charges stemming from the so-called "salmon drinking party" allegations.

Park Sung-hoon, the PPP's chief spokesperson, said in a statement Saturday that Lee's "absurd lies had long served as the Democratic Party's core script for framing the entire Ssangbangul North Korea remittance case as a fabricated prosecution investigation." He said the verdict had finally exposed the truth behind the "salmon drinking party at the prosecution building" allegations, which he described as an attempt to "deceive the public and mock the judiciary."

Park said the Democratic Party had "treated these false claims as sacred and recklessly held hearings and parliamentary investigations in the National Assembly, and ran wild threatening to impeach prosecutors who had conducted legitimate investigations." He added that the party had also pushed for a "special prosecutor to drop charges" to erase what he called the legal risks facing President Lee Jae Myung.

"An entire political party rode a criminal's shameless lies to paralyze the national criminal justice system and lead the charge in deceiving the public," Park said. He urged President Lee and the Democratic Party to "immediately stop laundering crimes."

Rep. Ju Jin-woo chairs the PPP's special committee to block the cancellation of President Lee Jae Myung's indictment. He wrote on Facebook that "even the last shred of grounds for dropping Lee Jae Myung's charges has collapsed." He urged the Ministry of Justice and prosecutors to "immediately withdraw the attempt to discipline prosecutor Park Sang-yong," and called on President Lee to halt efforts to have his charges dropped and to apologize.

Independent lawmaker Han Dong-hoon also wrote on Facebook that "the false accusation ritual that the entire Lee Jae Myung Democratic Party administration threw itself into is over," adding that "those who staged this false accusation ritual must be held accountable."

Han issued a direct warning to President Lee. "The court has ruled that there was no such thing as a 'salmon drinking party,'" he wrote. "If he still insists on using power to make his own trial disappear, the only end for an enemy of democracy is impeachment and ruin."


killpass@heraldcorp.com