PPP floor leader calls on Yong Hye-in to resign, questions Lee's motives in nomination

People Power Party floor leader Jeong Jeom-sik said Sunday that Yong Hye-in, the nominee for minister of gender equality and family, should step down not only from her nomination but also from her National Assembly seat, citing allegations that she was linked to a secretive underground organization. "The people did not vote for the Democratic Party of Korea alliance to funnel state subsidies to an underground organization resembling a cult," he said.

Jeong made the remarks in a Facebook post, asking, "Who is the real minister nominee — lawmaker Yong Hye-in, or Korea Board Games CEO Kim Gil-o?"

Jeong said the allegations surrounding the nominee centered on a claim that a series of organizations — the Social Party, the Labor Party, the Part-time Workers' Solidarity, the Youth Left and the Basic Income Party — had been run by a small, covert group known as the "underground organization," with Korea Board Games CEO Kim Gil-o, a former activist, serving as its ideological and financial backer.

He added that the secret group, operating under Kim's absolute influence, had allegedly functioned like a closed cult with rules including premarital chastity and bans on romantic relationships, while committing sexual violence internally. Yong, he said, had been accused of staying silent and turning a blind eye to all of it.

Jeong said suspicions were growing that Yong was merely a polished political front for the underground organization, with Kim at its center operating behind the scenes. He then turned to President Lee Jae Myung directly, noting that Lee had previously said he wanted to "take care of the left," and asked who the president had truly intended to benefit through the appointment.

Pressing Lee further, Jeong questioned whether giving Yong a second proportional-representation Assembly seat as Democratic Party of Korea leader, and now a cabinet post, was not for Yong's sake alone but to reward the Labor Party underground organization led by Kim. "I cannot understand what Kim Gil-o and the Labor Party underground organization mean to the Lee administration, that the president would go this far to look after lawmaker Yong," he said.

Jeong said too much remained shrouded in mystery — Yong as the public-facing minister nominee, Kim as the publicly known head of a gaming company, and presidential office chief of staff Kim Hyun-ji, who is widely believed to have orchestrated the entire appointment. "It is truly a triangular mystery: Yong Hye-in, Kim Gil-o and Kim Hyun-ji," he said.

Jeong warned that if things continued as they were, the confirmation hearing for the gender equality and family minister nominee would become "not a hearing for lawmaker Yong Hye-in, but a hearing for Kim Gil-o's underground organization." He added, "Just nominate Kim Gil-o, the actual head of the underground organization, as minister. That would at least be a more transparent appointment."