PPP leader slams Lee for taking selfies during Incheon stabbing rampage

People Power Party leader Jang Dong-hyeok on Thursday criticized President Lee Jae Myung for taking selfies with a character called "Bukang-i" while a stabbing rampage unfolded in Incheon's Guwol-dong, saying Lee was snapping photos while a victim lay in critical condition after emergency surgery.

Speaking at a PPP supreme council meeting at the National Assembly, Jang said, "If the president had not been briefed by then, Cheong Wa Dae is out of its mind. If he was briefed and still walked around smiling, the president is out of his mind." He added that Lee had publicly pledged to respond to threats to people's lives "even if it seems excessive," yet in practice showed what Jang called "excessive indifference and inaction."

Jang went on to say that Lee had boasted of building a system that puts life and safety first, but was now making what he called the "absurd claim" that a golf course counts as a presidential workplace. "Is receiving briefings while swinging a golf club what a life-and-safety-first system looks like?" he said.

Turning to the confirmation hearing for Kim Ji-yong, nominee to lead the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency, held on Wednesday, Jang said the session "ended as a laughably one-sided vetting hearing." He said ruling-party lawmakers spent the entire time asking only whether Kim was aligned with former President Yoon Suk Yeol, while the nominee "put on a tearful self-denial show, pleading for his loyalty to be recognized."

"What citizen watching this could believe in political neutrality?" Jang said. "They showed no interest whatsoever in the public safety issues that people actually worry about. It was enough to turn any viewer's stomach."

PPP floor leader Jeong Jeom-sik set his sights on independent lawmakers Kim Byung-kee and Kang Sun-woo — both former Democratic Party of Korea members — announcing he would pursue their expulsion from the National Assembly, calling them a "gapjil bribery duo."

Jeong said the case involving Kang "is not just Kang Sun-woo's individual misconduct — it is a Democratic Party nomination bribery scandal," and urged Democratic Party leader Kim Min-seok to step forward and apologize to the public rather than distancing the party from the affair.

On allegations that members of the Shincheonji religious group had joined the Democratic Party en masse, Jeong demanded that police "immediately wrap up the investigation into Rep. Kim Byung-kee and launch a compulsory investigation into the Shincheonji mass-membership case without delay."

He said both Special Prosecutor Min Jung-ki and the joint police-prosecution investigative team had already been aware of evidence pointing to the Shincheonji group's mass enrollment in the Democratic Party. "They conducted a malicious, opposition-targeted investigation to pin a religion-politics collusion frame on the People Power Party, while turning a blind eye to and covering up suspicions within the ruling party," he said.