Yoon vetoes 2 special probe bills, including one involving first lady

President Yoon Suk Yeol on Friday vetoed two opposition-led special investigation proposals, one of which involves allegations against first lady Kim Keon Hee, his office said.

Yoon exercised his veto power by endorsing a motion demanding the National Assembly reconsider the independent counsel bills that the main opposition Democratic Party (DP) railroaded through the Assembly last week.

The motion was approved during a Cabinet meeting minutes earlier.

The ruling People Power Party (PPP) boycotted last week’s vote, denouncing the bills as the opposition’s political ploy to negatively paint the Yoon administration ahead of April’s general elections. The DP has rejected the argument, saying there should be no sanctuary in investigations.

First lady Kim has been accused of involvement in manipulating the stock prices of Deutsch Motors Inc., a BMW car dealer in South Korea, between 2009 and 2012. She has denied the allegations.

The other special probe proposal is about allegations that six prominent people of the so-called 5 billion club were promised 5 billion won (US$3.8 million) each from an asset management firm involved in a corruption-ridden development project in the Daejang-dong district in Seongnam, south of Seoul.

“If the two bills are enacted, they may, on the contrary, interfere with the exercising of the people’s precious voting rights in fair elections and only create confusion in national affairs,” Prime Minister Han Duck-soo said while presiding over the extraordinary Cabinet meeting.

The presidential office expressed “deep regret” over the opposition party’s unilateral passage of the two special counsel bills, which it called “evil laws meant for the general elections.”

“The president has a responsibility to protect human rights and constitutional values as the guardian of the Constitution and the rule of law, and to fairly oversee the elections,” Yoon’s chief of staff, Lee Kwan-sup, said during a press briefing.

“Accordingly he has the obligation to demand a reconsideration of the special counsel bills that contradict such principles.”

Lee said the allegations involving the first lady date back 12 years, before she and the president got married, and were investigated during the preceding Moon Jae-in administration but led to no summonses, let alone indictments.

Meanwhile, the proposal for a special counsel investigation into the so-called 5 billion club is aimed at shielding DP leader Lee Jae-myung, the chief of staff said, as Lee was mayor of Seongnam when the development project took off, and anyone who allegedly took the 5 billion won would have been a person close to him.

It was the fourth time that Yoon has exercised his veto power. He had previously rejected a pro-labor measure known as the “yellow envelope law,” a nursing act aimed at defining the roles and responsibilities of nurses, and a revision to the grain bill requiring the government’s purchase of surplus rice.