Attorney Kim So-yeon stated that former emergency committee chairman of the People Power Party, Kim Jong-in, had a close relationship with Mr. Myung Tae-kyun. This claim was made after Kim Jong-in recently mentioned that he did not know Mr. Myung well and considered him just another person around politics.
Attorney Kim, representing Mr. Myung, refuted this by asserting that she had seen KakaoTalk messages exchanged between Mr. Myung and figures like Lee Jun-seok and Kim Jong-in during Mr. Myung’s summons by the prosecution. She emphasized that some of these messages dated back to 2021 and claimed that Kim Jong-in and Mr. Myung first met around October or November of 2020, contrary to Kim Jong-in’s assertion that their acquaintance began in March 2021.
Kim So-yeon further alleged that Kim Jong-in contacted Mr. Myung almost daily for advice and revealed that during the 2022 local elections, Kim Jong-in sought Mr. Myung’s opinion on the possibility of a candidate unification between Kim Jae-won and Yoo Young-ha in the Daegu mayoral election.
Regarding how the prosecution came to possess the conversations between Kim Jong-in and Mr. Myung, it was explained that a person named Kang Hye-kyung allegedly stole hard disks from the office of former lawmaker Kim Young-sun when the office was being vacated and that a shared computer was likely used by Mr. Myung to access KakaoTalk.
Additionally, Kim So-yeon mentioned that a recording of a phone conversation between President Yoon Suk-yeol and Mr. Myung, released by the Democratic Party, was prompted by Lee Jun-seok. She claimed that Lee had sent a KakaoTalk message to Mr. Myung in May 2020, suggesting that President Yoon wanted Kim Young-sun to participate in a primary, which eventually led to the controversial phone call between President Yoon and Mr. Myung.