PPP's Kim Jae-won calls ethics committee's suspension of membership rights 'heavy punishment,' warns against excessive discipline

People Power Party Supreme Council member Kim Jae-won said Friday that the party's Central Ethics Committee had acted improperly in handing down heavy disciplinary measures against four PPP lawmakers.

Speaking on SBS Radio's "Kim Tae-hyun's Politics Show" that day, Kim said he was "concerned about resolving internal party matters through disciplinary action." He added that he has "always believed excessive punishment is undesirable if discipline is ultimately seen as a process for correcting wrongful conduct."

Kim was responding to the ethics committee's decision Thursday to suspend the party membership rights of lawmakers Cho Kyung-tae, Kwon Young-jin, Jin Jong-oh and Seo Beom-su. While saying he was "very cautious about commenting on the ethics committee's decisions," he expressed hope that the committee "would have been more lenient."

On Rep. Lee Jin-suk, who faces growing calls for discipline over her hosting of a May 18 forum, Kim said "an enormous number of disciplinary requests have come before the ethics committee," adding that "discipline is sometimes sought as a means of political opposition." He argued that the committee "sufficiently filters such cases before making decisions," and that it was therefore inaccurate to suggest the committee was refusing to act simply because a request had been filed.

He further argued that "excessively disciplining members in itself silences political opinion," and said that in Lee's case, "the fact that the Democratic Party is pushing so aggressively for her punishment must also be taken into consideration."

On PPP leader Jang Dong-hyeok's push to re-elect constituency committee chairs, Kim said the party's constitution and bylaws "clearly stipulate that constituency committee chairs are to be elected at the end of August in even-numbered years," and that the practice has been to re-elect sitting chairs through the steering committees formed within each constituency.

He said Jang's position was that "since the rules specify that chairs should in principle be elected by a vote of dues-paying members or all party members, he wants to give members that choice." However, Kim noted that the floor leader and others were pushing back, arguing that applying this method across all 246 constituency committees "would cause confusion and disrupt the party's united front against the ruling bloc." He described the two sides as being at a standoff.

Kim viewed the re-election of constituency committee chairs as a reform measure for the party. "The party leader is proposing to leave even positions he could appoint himself to the free choice of party members — in that sense, it is a reform measure for the party," he said.