Jung Chung-rae says Kim Min-seok's 'party leader dream' remark was the real self-serving politics

Jung Chung-rae, former leader of the Democratic Party of Korea, on Tuesday criticized former Prime Minister Kim Min-seok, saying it was Kim who had engaged in "self-serving politics" by making an ill-timed remark about dreaming of becoming party leader while serving as a senior government official who should have been focused solely on state affairs.

Jung made the remarks in a Facebook post, writing that "using the vague notion of 'self-serving politics' to attack an opponent is not only imprecise but also wrong."

The post appeared to be a direct rebuttal to Kim, a rival in the Democratic Party leadership primary election, who announced his bid for party leader on Monday and said that "over the past year, the harmful effects of self-serving politics threw the party and government-party cooperation into confusion."

Jung's reference to the "party leader dream" remark appeared to target a statement Kim made in a YouTube interview with SamproTV in January, in which Kim said, "Since being the Democratic Party leader is something to be proud of, of course I have that dream."

"I'm told I engaged in self-serving politics — let me address that," Jung said. He said that after taking office as party leader, he applied a policy of broad inclusion in staffing party positions, placing capable people in the right roles regardless of whether they had supported him during the party convention.

He also said he had not given a single exclusive print interview during his tenure as party leader, asking, "Wouldn't someone doing self-serving politics need to do countless media interviews?" He added, "At the time, I thought: this is President Lee Jae Myung's moment, not mine."

Jung also said he had not installed his own people in the local elections, and that whether candidates close to him or distant from him received nominations through the primary election process was entirely the result of choices made by party members.

On his push to merge with the Rebuilding Korea Party ahead of the local elections, Jung said he would "accept the criticism that the process was not handled gracefully," but added that he found it hard to agree with the claim that pursuing the merger itself was an act of self-serving politics.

He went on to say, "I can only speculate that those who agreed to the merger in principle while effectively opposing and derailing it were the ones actually engaged in self-serving politics."