Song Young-gil says Hong Joon-pyo told him 110,000 Shincheonji members joined PPP to sway 2021 primary

The Shincheonji Church of Jesus has emerged as an unexpected flashpoint in the Democratic Party of Korea's leadership race ahead of its Aug. 17 national convention, as candidates Song Young-gil and Kim Min-seok have both alleged Shincheonji involvement in the convention — putting pressure on rival candidate Jung Chung-rae.

Song said Tuesday at a YouTube debate that he had lunched with former Daegu Mayor Hong Joon-pyo on Tuesday, calling the Shincheonji issue "a serious challenge that every political party must grapple with." Later that afternoon, Song wrote on social media that he and Hong had shared regrets that Hong, not Yoon Suk Yeol, might have become the People Power Party's presidential candidate in 2021 had Shincheonji not intervened in the primary. Song added that Hong had told him directly about "a shocking conversation" Hong had with Shincheonji founder Lee Man-hee after the presidential election.

According to Song's camp, Hong raised the 2021 PPP presidential primary at Tuesday's lunch. Song said the primary had been structured so that 70 percent of the vote came from registered party members and 30 percent — or in some versions, 50 percent — from polling. He said that under the original rules, only members who had paid dues of at least 1,000 won a month for three or more consecutive months were entitled to vote as registered members, though he noted he had not been able to cross-check this with former PPP leader Lee Jun-seok.

Song said that because former Prosecutor General Yoon Suk Yeol and former Board of Audit and Inspection chief Choi Jae-hyung had joined the party shortly before the primary, they had no time to build up a dues-paying membership base. As a result, the PPP's supreme council passed a special resolution allowing anyone who paid just 1,000 won in dues for a single month to receive voting rights — a one-time exception.

Song said that once this one-month pathway to voting rights was created, approximately 110,000 Shincheonji members joined the party en masse to exploit it. "At the time, 540,000 registered members voted, and 110,000 of them had just joined — that is an enormous number," he said. "Those 110,000 people, acting on the founder's instructions, would have cast more than 90 percent of their votes for a specific candidate. Ultimately, Hong won the polling portion but lost the registered-member vote, handing the presidential candidacy to Yoon."

Song said that after losing the primary, Hong traveled to the Daegu-Cheongdo area and met Shincheonji founder Lee Man-hee in person. According to Song, Hong asked Lee about the mass membership drive, and Lee told him that a senior PPP official had approached him at the time and asked for help electing Yoon by having Shincheonji members join the party.

Song said Hong told him that Lee had also explained his personal motivation: during the COVID-19 pandemic, then-Prosecutor General Yoon had refrained from carrying out a search and seizure of Shincheonji, and had prosecutors pressed ahead, "our religious organization would have been completely destroyed." Out of gratitude toward Yoon, Lee agreed to the PPP official's request and directed 110,000 members to join and vote for Yoon. "That is ultimately why Hong Joon-pyo lost," Song said.

Song also disclosed that Shincheonji had approached his own Sonamudan party while he was in detention. He said the group contacted the party's secretary-general and proposed that if Song would meet Lee Man-hee once after his release, Shincheonji would arrange a mass membership drive, help clear the party's debts and provide ongoing dues support.

"When I heard that, I was stunned," Song said. "I told them, 'Why did you even meet with those people? Cut off all contact immediately.'" He added: "If they approached even Sonamudan this way, I have deep concerns about whether any political party in South Korea is truly free from Shincheonji's reach."

Song called for a structural fix, saying the current system — under which anyone can join a party online and become a full voting member by paying 1,000 won a month for six months — is vulnerable to organized infiltration. "If someone sets their mind to it, they can join as a member ahead of any major event — a presidential election, a party leadership race — and exert influence," he said. "We need to think seriously together about what practical measures can actually prevent that, while preserving the merits of the one-person, one-vote system."

Earlier, Kim Min-seok had also claimed there were signs of Shincheonji attempting to interfere in the current convention. "Breaking up the three-way alliance of anti-Lee Jae-myung forces, factionalism and Shincheonji is the essence of this convention," Kim said, adding that he hoped to hold a rigorous critique of Shincheonji's political interference, including the stalled special prosecutor investigation into the group. Jung Chung-rae has pushed back, saying he would take legal action against what he called "fake news."