Joo Ho-young: "Isn't the talk of Jeong Jin-seok and Oh Se-hoon merging a bit exaggerated?"

On the 11th, Sohn Kyung-shik, Chairman of the Korea Employers Federation, Kim Ki-moon, Chairman of the Korea Federation of SMEs, and other economic organization leaders met with Joo Ho-young, Floor Leader of the People Power Party, at the National Assembly. The meeting was arranged by the People Power Party to hear the business community's opinions on the Serious Accidents Punishment Act. Photo by Yoon Dong-joo doso7@

[Asia Economy Reporter Lee Ji-eun] Joo Ho-young, the floor leader of the People Power Party, expressed discomfort over the proposal for a merger made by Jeong Jin-seok, the chairman of the nomination committee, and Oh Se-hoon, former mayor of Seoul, to Ahn Cheol-soo, the leader of the People Party, saying, "Isn't this going a bit too far?"

On the 12th, Joo appeared on YTN Radio's "Hwang Bo-seon's Start of a New Morning" and said, "Discussing a merger while holding responsible positions and managing elections seems to be going a bit too far."

He pointed out, "The issue of whether to merge or not should actually be discussed only after the will of all party members is established," adding, "Looking back at previous elections, there were times when merger discussions took place before important elections, causing us to miss the period for criticizing the ruling party, which in turn caused fatigue among the public." This implies that the public may feel fatigued by merger discussions held before elections.

Joo said, "We need to unify, but there are various methods: party-to-party integration, forming alliances without merging, or merging after the election," and added, "It is a matter that should be carefully and quickly concluded within a short period, but if only one side's story is heard in a complicated way, it could negatively affect the election."

Regarding President Moon's inaugural speech, he criticized it as "a hollow New Year's address filled with self-praise," saying, "With over 60% negative public evaluation, it lacks content on what went wrong and what will be done going forward." Regarding the apology on housing issues, he said, "They practically did not implement policies to increase supply and are only now saying they will increase supply, but it will take five years to see the effects," adding, "It was something that should have been done earlier."

On the Serious Accident Punishment Act, he said, "The Democratic Party insisted on passing the law unconditionally by January 8, when the temporary session ends, so we corrected many parts of the law, but we could not do it entirely as we wished," and described the meeting with six economic organizations as "an occasion to explain what issues existed in the content and how our efforts brought changes."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.