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Jang Dong-hyuk, leader of the People Power Party, speaks during an emergency Supreme Council meeting at the National Assembly in Seoul on September 3. / Source: Song Ui-ju

The ruling People Power Party (PPP) on Wednesday denounced the special counsel’s raid attempts on its floor leader’s office and floor affairs bureau as “thuggish political violence,” proclaiming September 3 as “the day to end the campaign to brand us an insurrection party.”

At an emergency Supreme Council meeting at the National Assembly, PPP leader Jang Dong-hyuk said, “This is a crude and vile political scheme to break the arms and legs of the PPP command and to gag the opposition,” adding, “This fall of 2025 will be a season of sleepless nights for Special Counsel Cho Eun-seok.”

Jang argued that the Democratic Party’s (DP) narrative of “insurrection” had already collapsed: “They vowed to shake even the dust from the PPP floor leader’s office to uncover the truth of what happened for a few hours on the evening of December 3 last year. What was revealed is just how empty and absurd that smear truly was.”

He continued, “Yesterday’s search and seizure only proved that the DP’s insurrection narrative is a hollow shell. The warrant presented yesterday—after winter, spring and summer have passed—reads like a confession that their labeling campaign was nothing at all.”

Floor leader Song Eon-seok also took aim at the special counsel: “It looks like the special prosecutors are competing over who can suppress the opposition and exact political retribution more harshly. Cho Eun-seok’s team has gone beyond lawmakers to raid the cellphones, PCs, laptops and even cars of party staff. They lay in wait outside staffers’ homes and suddenly appeared as they left for work to seize their phones.”

Song said the team ignored “the right to counsel,” adding that they refused to return phones while insisting, “We didn’t enter the house,” and “We didn’t search the residence.”

Criticizing a search of former floor leader Choo Kyung-ho’s home and office over alleged “obstruction of lifting martial law,” Song said, “This is a fantasy novel stitched together to force delusions into facts. Who supposedly obstructed the lift? Did someone block the plenary hall doors, drag people out, or stop anyone by phone?”

He further ridiculed the warrant period—set from May last year through today—saying, “Are we to believe former floor leader Choo had some supernatural foresight to anticipate emergency martial law six months in advance and plan to thwart the vote? Does Special Counsel Cho ride a time machine?”

Song concluded, “If they weren’t determined to manufacture dirt where none exists, this would be unthinkable. The special counsel’s reckless spree of warrants has the DP so anxious that it is clamoring for a special tribunal. They aim to tailor a guilty verdict to their taste—a people’s court in the style of a communist show trial—that will go down as a dark chapter in Korean democracy.”

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Song Eon-seok, PPP floor leader, speaks during an emergency Supreme Council meeting at the National Assembly in Seoul on September 3. / Source: Song Ui-ju