Democratic Party to Exclude Sexual Violence, Prostitution, Domestic Violence, and Child Abuse Offenders from Candidacy

Local Election Planning Team Discusses 'Nomination Disqualification Review Criteria'
Strengthened Beyond Existing 7 Major Standards...Including Sexual Crimes, Domestic Violence and Child Abuse to Be Unconditionally Disqualified

[Asia Economy Reporter Oh Ju-yeon] The Democratic Party of Korea has decided to significantly strengthen the candidate screening criteria for the June 1 local elections. In particular, anyone who has received criminal punishment, including prosecution suspension, for sexual violence, prostitution, domestic violence, or child abuse will be excluded from candidacy without exception.

According to the Democratic Party on the 30th, the party's local election planning team held a closed meeting at the Yeouido party headquarters the previous day and established these candidate screening criteria.

After the meeting, Representative Shin Hyun-young briefed, "We already had seven disqualification criteria including violent crimes, drunk driving, sexual violence, prostitution, domestic violence, child abuse, and speculative multiple home ownership," adding, "The planning team decided that among these, offenders of sexual violence, prostitution, domestic violence, and child abuse who have received criminal punishment, including prosecution suspension, will be considered disqualified from candidacy without exception."

Additionally, crimes such as abuse of power and sexual harassment in the workplace, intrusion into multi-use facilities for sexual purposes, digital sex crimes, stalking crimes, and grooming sexual crimes targeting children and adolescents were also added as disqualification criteria without exception.

The drunk driving screening criteria were also strengthened so that anyone caught driving under the influence even once since the enactment of the "Yoon Chang-ho Act" on December 18, 2018, will be included in the disqualification criteria without exception. The previous drunk driving disqualification standards of "three times within 15 years or twice within 10 years" remain unchanged.

Regarding female and youth candidacies, it was reported, "The basic direction of the discussion was that women, persons with disabilities, and youth should be given more consideration," and "the extent to which additional points will be expanded will be discussed further later." Representative Shin said, "While expanding candidacies is important, many opinions emphasized that the party should actively support women and youth so that they can actually win," and explained, "There was also a suggestion to assign priority ranking 'Ga' (the highest among the candidate list order of Ga, Na, Da) to youth and women candidates within the electable range, if possible."

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