Jin Joong-kwon. [Yonhap]
Jin Joong-kwon. [Yonhap]

Jin Joong-kwon, a special-appointment professor at Kwangwoon University, said the announcement by former Gyeonggi Province Vice Governor for Peace Lee Hwa-young that she plans to release a second statement will place considerable pressure on the current administration.

Appearing on the YouTube program "Sisaekkeut Jjang" on Sisajournal TV on Tuesday, Jin said Lee's earlier statement had indirectly suggested that the charges brought against her and the allegations surrounding President Lee Jae Myung were one and the same.

"The passage where she says she empathizes with the president's anguish — that he, like her, is suffering under a fabricated false charge — logically means: if my indictment was fabricated, so was yours," Jin said. "It is a warning that says either we both survive, or we both go down."

Jin said Lee's underlying argument was: "If President Lee is innocent, then so am I. So why is one of us president while I sit in prison?" He added that she was emphasizing that she and the president share a common fate.

On the question of a potential pardon for Lee, Jin said the political cost would be high. "If she is pardoned, the public will ask whether the government is pardoning an accomplice — that makes it an extremely difficult choice politically," he said. "But if she cannot get a pardon, she will try to prove that she was only a secondary offender and that someone else was the principal, in order to reduce her sentence."

Jin also said Lee had been expressing grievances to figures connected to the administration through prison visits and messages from her cell. "There is an underlying sense of resentment — that she has been left to bear all the blame and remain in prison while the relevant figures have taken key posts or been released," he said. "Her warning that she will act when the time comes is ultimately pressure that she will continue making explosive statements if she fails to secure a pardon or early release," he added.


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