Inaugural Meeting of `People Power` Held

The `Life Politics Network, People Power` (www.cybercorea.org) which gained notoriety for `Beautiful World Without the Chosun Newspaper Campaign` held its inaugural meeting presided by Myung Ke-nam and Moon Sung-geun last Saturday at Jochiwon Town Youth Center in Yeongi, Chungnam Province and commenced activities for the reform of politics and the media.

`People Power` declared in its inaugural statement that it will “support those politicians with a transparent political philosophy who are willing to engage in reform activities, and expose corrupt, conservative politicians based on the power of people`s participation.” The organization also actively works toward “informing people about the dark side of the conservative media which distorts people`s views of the truth through suspect reporting.”

`People Power` also made a declaration to carry out various reform activities such as the 2004 General Election Defeat Campaign, the Election Law Amendment Campaign, and the Politician Fan Club Promotion Campaign.

They plan to select and post the names of lawmakers either for or against reform on their homepage. They also plan to research corruption charges and anti-democratic activities, and present its first list of candidates that should be defeated in the December elections this year, as well as to confirm the next target list subject to its strategic rejection campaign in February 2004.

Currently there are politician fan clubs about such as for Kang Keum-Sil, Lee Jae-jung, Kim Do-kwan, Im Kong-suk, Jung Yoon-jae, Lee Chang-dong, Chu Mi-ae, Song In-bae, and Cho Soon-hyung.

`People Power allows netizens to score daily newspaper articles which are hot topics and criticize editorials and columns from the Dong-a, Chosun, and Joong-ang newspapers.

Currently there are about 2300 `People Power` members. Myung Ke-nam and Moon Sung-geun participated as general members in the inaugural meeting last Saturday with lawmaker Kim Hong-Shin of the Grand National Party, and Secretary-General of the People`s Reform Party, Kim Young Dae, as well as 250 other dignitaries in attendance.

Hyo-Lim Son aryssong@donga.com