The People Power Party pushed back against police over the arrest of former Korea Communications Commission Chairperson Lee Jin-sook, stepping up a lending offensive. It even claimed the arrest was an excessive move to smother the controversy over Presidential Secretariat Deputy Chief of Staff Kim Hyun-ji.
People Power Party leader Jang Dong-hyeok said on the 3rd on social media (SNS), "If police left out the fact that the former Chairperson submitted a statement of reasons for nonappearance when applying for the arrest warrant, that is a serious crime."
Jang added, "If a prosecutor still requested the arrest warrant and a judge issued it even though a statement of reasons for nonappearance was attached, Korea's judicial system has completely collapsed."
Jang also held an emergency press conference at the National Assembly the day before. At the briefing, he said, "Ahead of Chuseok, I expected the henchmen of power would do something, and in the end they arrested the former Chairperson."
There is also analysis that the People Power Party linked the case of Kim Hyun-ji, who moved to the Deputy Chief of Staff post—a position with no precedent of appearing at a parliamentary audit—to target public opinion at Chuseok ancestral rites tables.
Jang said that day, "If police do not want to compound their wrongdoing, they must immediately release the former Chairperson," while also calling it "an investigation-records fabrication case carried out right before the Chuseok holiday to protect the absolutely supreme 'Kim Hyun-ji.'"
Chief spokesperson Park Sung-hoon also issued a separate commentary, saying, "As the controversy grew over the absolutely supreme Kim Hyun-ji, the Deputy Chief of Staff, whose educational background not to mention nationality are unclear, they moved the police to cover public opinion with an unreasonable arrest."
He continued, calling it "a historic scene of dictatorship and politics of fear," and said, "Public sentiment is turning its back coldly on the Democratic Party of Korea, which is not satisfied with legislative dictatorship and is obsessed with political retaliation, and on President Lee's politics of fear."