| Myung Tae-Kyun | |||||||||
| Birth Place: | Changnyeong, South Korea | ||||||||
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Myung Tae-kyun (born 1970) is a South Korean businessman and journalist who is known to be a key figure in the 2024 political scandal involving first lady Kim Keon-hee and several conservative politicians. He is well known in South Gyeongsang Province and is suspected of conducting unverified polls and illegally intervening in various elections through the "Future Korea Research Institute" (Korean: 미래한국연구소) he founded.
It is suspected that Lee Jun-seok and Kim Young-sun, as well as President Yoon Suk Yeol, received help from Myung during the election process. The main opposition DPK and Cho Kuk's Rebuilding Korea Party called the series of incidents are "Myeong Tae-kyun Gate" (Korean: 명태균 게이트) and compared him to Choi Soon-sil, a key figure in the 2016 South Korean political scandal.[1] [2] [3]
On September 19, 2024, News Tomato (뉴스토마토), a small media outlet, raised suspicions that during the 2022 by-election, President Yoon Suk Yeol and his wife Kim Keon-hee suddenly pressed for the nomination of Kim Young-sun in Uichang, Changwon, South Gyeongsang Province, after a call with Myung.[4] Kim Young-sun was nominated and elected as a candidate for the People Power Party in the by-election and served as a member of the National Assembly until 2024.
A follow-up report released on the same day indicated that Myung and the first lady were also involved in the PPP's nomination process for the 2024 parliamentary election. Kim Young-sun also reportedly had a meeting with Lee Jun-seok of the New Reform Party at Chilbulsa Temple in Jirisan when he was eventually cut off from the 2024 nomination, and demanded the No. 1 position as proportional representation of the NRP on the condition that he reveal his plotting with Kim Keon-hee.[5]
On September 20, JTBC reported that the prosecution confirmed circumstantial evidence that Kim Young-sun delivered 63 million South Korean won to Myung shortly after the 2022 by-election.[6]
He worked under the title of the chairman of the "Future Korea Research Institute" (미래한국연구소), a polling firm. The institute mainly conducted polls in the form of being listed as a client for surveys conducted by other pollster, PNR. Yoon Suk Yeol was found to have topped 49 of the 50 surveys conducted by the institute in the face of the 2022 presidential election, which led to suspicions of tampering with samples since it differed from the general toss-up between Yoon Suk Yeol and Lee Jae-myung in other surveys.[7]
On October 6, The Hankyorehs report revealed that the Future Korea Research Institute was accused of illegal polling four times from 2019 to 2022 and received three warnings and one fine.[8]
On October 11, No Cut News (노컷뉴스) reported that Myung collected personal information of about 570,000 members of the PPP in 2021, especially 8,500 of which were stored in the form of internal codes by encrypting their propensity to support, age, gender, and region. Pointing out that Myung did not publish it even after conducting the poll, the report said it is necessary to explain why he conducted the poll which he would not even publish, and where he tried to use the collected information.[9]
On October 15, an exclusive report by News Tomato revealed a recording of Myung's phone call directing the specific results of the polls during the PPP's presidential primary. In the call, he asked a working-level official to adjust the approval ratings of Yoon Suk Yeol and Hong Joon-pyo, the two main candidates of the race at the time, to make Yoon appear ahead.[10] [11]
Myung used his Facebook page as a window of disclosure, revealing his relationship with key political figures as if showing off, but the parties generally denied the allegations.
Lee Jun-seok, a member of the New Reform Party, was suspected to have been able to win as a sudden sensation in the 2021 PPP leadership election and the 2024 parliamentary election thanks to the help of Myung. Na Kyung-won, who was originally a strong candidate for the party's leadership but lost to Lee, argued with him, referring to his early morning meeting with Myung at Chilbulsa Temple. Lee has largely denied any connection to Myung, pointing out his relationship with another axis to the allegation, the Yoon Suk Yeol couple.[12] [13] [14]
Oh Se-hoon, the mayor of Seoul, was suspected of receiving assistance by contacting Myung during the 2021 by-election when he was elected. Myung claimed this to himself in a media interview, saying that Oh also cried in front of him four times to seek help.[15] In response, Oh strongly denied Myung's claim, saying that he had written a complaint against him.[16]
On October 15, Myung released a record of his messages with Kim Keon-hee on his Facebook page. The messages generally contained Kim Kun-hee apologizing for her "oppa (오빠) who talks without thinking" and relying on Myung. Under speculation that the word "oppa" meant President Yoon Suk Yeol, Those messages sparked suspicions that the first lady was frequently involved in the president's state affairs.[17] [18] However, the presidential office dismissed the controversy, saying that "oppa" means her own brother.[19]
On the same night, Myung said in an interview with CBS that the details of the conversation between him and the president and his wife were more than 2,000 pages long, heralding further revelations.[20]
On October 21, Kang Hye-kyung, a close confidant of Myung, appeared before the National Assembly's Legislative and Judiciary Committee. She made mostly affirmative remarks about Myung's alleged manipulation of opinion polls and his alleged involvement in the nomination process with first lady Kim Keon-hee. Instead of Myung, who stopped revealing his relationship with politicians after October 16, Kang has emerged as a key reveler in the scandal.[21]
Kang responded to Jeon Hyun-hee's question, "Who gave Kim Young-sun's nomination?" and said, "It was from Kim Keon-hee." She also released a recording in which the names of the president and his wife are mentioned several times.[22]