GNP holds anti-government rally; blasts MDP role in recent scandals

The opposition Grand National Party (GNP) held an anti-government rally at Seoul Railway Station today and lashed out at the administration over a series of recent scandals, including the illegal loan incident at Hanvit Bank and the ruling Millennium Democratic Party`s (MDP) illegal interference in the probes of MDP lawmakers` election campaign expenses. In the protest rally, the opposition party harshly denounced President Kim Dae-Jung and the ruling party, contending that the Kim administration was a "brainless" and doomed regime.

GNP president Lee Hoi-Chang charged that he has been on bad terms with President Kim since the government`s tax probes into the GNP`s election financing and its forcible recruitment of GNP lawmakers, noting that whenever the GNP attempted to conduct "the politics of coexistence," Kim betrayed the opposition. Rep. Kim Deog-Ryong asserted that it was difficult for small businesses to receive a loan of merely 10 million won, but Hanvit Bank provided a huge loan to the privileged, a comment on the suspicions surrounding Culture-Tourism Minister Park Jie-Won.

GNP vice president Choe Byung-Yul claimed that the ruling MDP itself would collapse, though a member of its supreme council remarked on the split of the GNP. Vice president Lee Boo-Young asserted that should a Nobel Prize be awarded to those who contained, fabricated and covered up scandals, the President would be the right man to receive it.

Three younger party lawmakers, Reps. Oh Se-Hoon, Lee Sung-Hun and Won Hee-Ryong, unleashed acrimonious charges at the pre-rally gathering, In particular, Rep. Oh, referring to the Hanvit Bank loan scandal, claimed that the Kim government is for and by the privileged. He went on to charge that Kim remained completely silent on the festering scandals during his one-hour special interview with three major broadcasting stations on last Sunday, only boasting of his achievements.

Rep. Won demanded to know how a firm with a paid-in capital of only 500 million won received bank loans amounting to as much as 100.4 billion won.

He said, "We have already discerned the end of the Kim regime, and are now calling upon the people to open Kim`s deaf ears, so that he may hear their voices."