The Marmot’s Hole

This stuff got old a long time ago. The only thing positive I can say about GNP chairman Choe Byeong-nyeol’s offer to resign if his party loses its parliamentary majority in the coming general elections is that there’s a [very] slight chance it might happen. Choe also repeated his call for a special investigation into allegations that President Roh’s camp received illegal campaign funds from corporations during the last presidential election, apparently forgetting that a) the current investigation into illegal campaign funds isn’t even finished yet and b) former GNP head and presidential candidate Lee Hoi-chang has admitted to taking about 50 billion won in ill-begotten money (and still lost). Now, the screwed up thing is that Roh might still be forced to make good on his pledge to resign if his party took more than 1/10 the amount of illegal money that the GNP received. According to the Korea Times:

There has been controversy over the sums of illegal donations funneled into the GNP and Roh’s presidential campaign team. According to the prosecution’s investigation so far, the GNP raised some 50.2 billion won from businesses, while the Roh camp accepted about 840 million won.

President Roh admitted on Friday his camp had used some 35 billion to 40 billion won in both legal and illegal campaign funds. Given the 28 billion won that his camp reported to the national election watchdog, the illegal funds collected by the Roh camp could reach up to 12 billion won, based on Roh’s confession.

Now, 12 billion out of 50 billion strikes me as slightly more than 10%. As much as I dislike Roh’s politics, I’d hate to see him go because he said something stupid, and I’d hate even more to see those thieving bastards in the GNP score a cheap political victory in this manner.