Opposition parties led by the People Power Party sharpened their attacks on Democratic Party lawmaker Kim Seung-won, the party and President Lee Jae-myung on the 30th, after an appellate court sentenced Kang, the founder of pharmaceutical company Genencell, to four years in prison and ordered him detained in a case involving alleged lobbying for clinical trial approval.
In a statement that day, party spokesperson Cho Yong-sul said the appellate court found that Kang had asked Kim, through a broker, to help secure clinical trial approval from the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, and also acknowledged that 600 million won was paid to the broker in return. "This can no longer be dismissed as a mere allegation," he said.
"Investigators must carefully establish what the 600 million won actually was, how the solicitation was made and what role Kim played in that process, and must thoroughly determine whether any additional exercise of power was involved," Cho said. "There is no sanctuary before the law. Kim must explain himself directly to the public."
Rep. Na Kyung-won wrote on Facebook that "the arrow of the investigation must now point at where the solicitation ended up and at the substance of power-backed lobbying." She added that "Kim, of course, but also the drug safety ministry, the brokers involved, the flow of funds and suspicions of outside pressure must all be investigated without leaving a single point unexamined."
"What if Kim, the errand boy for withdrawing indictments, had become justice minister?" she wrote. "President Lee Jae-myung must also be held accountable for the appointment. If the president did not know, that is incompetence; if he knew and still tried to push it through, he deceived the public."
Independent lawmaker Han Dong-hoon said the appellate court recognized that the 600 million won received from Kang by Yang, a hostess-bar broker who called Kim Seung-won her "older brother," was compensation for Kim lobbying the drug safety commissioner over a poison. "With Kang's detention today, the door has opened for a special counsel probe into the older brother's poison lobbying," he said. He then jabbed at Democratic Party leader Kim Min-seok, saying, "Kim called it an appointment that looked better the more you looked at it. Let him say a word now."
