Rep. Lee Jae-myung, onetime presidential candidate and the leader of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea, appears at a meeting of the party leadership on Thursday. (The Korea Herald)

Rep. Lee Jae-myung, the Democratic Party of Korea chair and last year’s presidential candidate, is facing a possible arrest over corruption controversies from his time as the mayor of Seongnam and governor of Gyeonggi Province.

The Seoul prosecution service’s anti-corruption investigation bureau on Thursday filed a request for an arrest warrant after Lee with the Seoul central district court, about a year and four months after the investigation opened in September 2021. Lee is the first leader of a major opposition party wanted for arrest in the nation.

Lee, while serving as the head of the two municipal offices, is accused of leaking official secrets and handing public real estate projects to certain private developers. This enabled his key associates, three of whom have already been arrested and indicted, to together reap at least 788 billion won ($615 million) in profit.

He also faces accusations of receiving at least 13 billion won in “sponsorships” from four companies for a soccer team operated by the municipal office of Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, in exchange for favors, such as changing building permits or land use.

Speaking to reporters, Lee yet again denied all accusations standing against him, and called the latest move by prosecutors investigating him “dictatorship.”

He said the rule of law has “effectively collapsed” due to President Yoon Suk Yeol’s “desire to eliminate a political adversary.” Lee ran against Yoon in the 2022 presidential election and lost by a slim margin of 0.73 percent.

He then compared Yoon to the country’s dictator Chun Doo-hwan who seized power through a military coup and served in office for eight years until 1988. Rising to power in 1980, Chun jailed Kim Dae-jung, who later became a Democratic Party president.

“Dictators have always distorted truths and cracked down on their political adversaries. But if history is any guide, dictators are always punished,” he said.

“I will bravely stand up against Yoon’s dictatorial regime.”

Arresting Lee, an incumbent lawmaker, requires the National Assembly’s consent before it is put to a decision by the court. It is unlikely the arrest warrant request will pass the National Assembly, where more than half of the seats are held by the Democratic Party, to get to the court.

In an emergency meeting convened after the prosecutors’ request, Democratic Party leaders made it clear they would make sure the National Assembly vote on Lee’s arrest warrant request falls through.

“The National Assembly vote on the arrest warrant request is not even worth considering. Our party will stick together and vote it down,” said Rep. Jung Chung-rae, a third-time lawmaker who sits on the seven-member supreme council, the party’s top decision-making body.

He went on, “I have one question. What about (first lady) Kim Keon Hee?”

Other top Democratic Party lawmakers, speaking at the same meeting, said prosecutors ought to look into the first lady and her allegations as well.

Minor opposition parties, including the Justice Party and Basic Income Party, called on the Democratic Party leader to follow through with his earlier pledge of stripping lawmakers of their immunity from arrest.

Lee, who resigned as Gyeonggi Province governor in October 2021 to run for president, pledged as a presidential candidate that he would abolish the “special immunity” granted to lawmakers. Under the Constitution, lawmakers are protected from arrest or detainment while serving their terms in office.

Justice Party leader Lee Jeong-mi told reporters the same day that lawmakers having the ability to avoid arrest in a criminal investigation was a “privilege.”

“He should give up that immunity as he had pledged to in the last presidential election,” she said.

World Bank economist-turned-lawmaker Rep. Cho Jung-hun of Transition Korea Party said in a radio interview the immunity from arrest for lawmakers was “outdated.”

“The protection from arrest was written into the Constitution during the martial regime when lawmakers faced dangers of criminal consequences for opposing the government. I see little reason for keeping it to this day,” he said.

The deputy head of the Democratic Party’s legal affairs committee, Cho Sang-ho, said Lee giving up that immunity would mean rescinding constitutional rights.

“There simply is no process that would compel him to give up his rights enshrined in the Constitution,” he said in a phone call with The Korea Herald.

But if the National Assembly decides to agree to let to court review whether to issue the arrest warrant for Lee, although highly improbable at this point, it certainly is not without precedent.

In the past three years, three lawmakers -- two from the ruling People Power Party and one from the Democratic Party -- under criminal investigation have had arrest warrants issued after them after the National Assembly voted to pass prosecutors’ request.

The Democratic Party also warned that they would be staging another rally with registered party members from all over the country on Friday, to protest the arrest warrant possibly awaiting Lee. As recently as Feb. 4, Lee and other party leaders held an anti-Yoon Suk Yeol rally in Seoul’s central Gwanghwamun square, on the hundredth day since the Halloween crowd disaster in Itaewon that killed 159 people.

In public statements, the Democratic Party has consistently blasted the criminal investigations of its leader and his close aides as “political persecution” by the Yoon Suk Yeol administration and as “dictatorial oppression.”

“I know I’m going to be indicted. The prosecutors will do whatever they can to get me indicted,” Lee said during a press conference on Jan. 30.

After news broke of the arrest warrant request for Lee, Park Chan-dae of the Democratic Party supreme council commented to reporters that it was the “stuff of insanity.”

“This is purely political and has no legitimate basis,” he said.