More Identity Theft Found Involving UNDP’s Primary

The Police, who have been investigating the identity theft case involving hundreds of people who were registered to the Electoral College for the United New Democratic Party’s presidential primary without their knowledge, including President Roh Moo-hyun, found that someone in Jeolla Province also illegally used the identification of others to register them as voters for the primary election without their consent. The police grilled Jeong In-hun, a 45-year-old woman arrested on Thursday, over ties to political groups or possible accomplices. However, Jeong claimed that she acted alone in illicitly registering several hundreds of people to the voter list of the UNDP primary, including President Roh.

“Although she admitted that she paid his son, only identified as Park, and his friend, 5,000 won per hour to resister people to the Electoral College without their consent, she stated that no one was behind the case. She also added that stealing the identity of President Roh was simply a mistake,” a police official said.

“If I knew that President Roh was included in the list, I would not have registered him. I stole their identities in order to promote the primary race, not to help a particular candidate,” Jeong told reporters before she was questioned by the police on Thursday morning.

The police, who have examined confiscated hard drives from Internet cafés and data submitted from an Internet company responsible for the registration process of the UNDP primary’s Electoral College, confirmed that Jeong stole at least 523 people’s identities at two Internet cafés with her son and his friends. Given that they worked until 3a.m. and intentionally changed Internet cafés, the police believe that politicians were likely involved in masterminding the case. Jeong is believed to have worked in several Internet cafés to hide her traces upon someone’s advice. “At the beginning of voter recruitment, local organizations under the primary candidates’ camps fiercely competed with each other to recruit more voters for the race in an attempt to show their loyalty,” an official of the UNDP said.

The police plan to seek an arrest warrant for Jeong after another round of questioning on charges of counterfeiting and altering electronic records, violating resident registration regulations and obstruction of duty. “The UNDP sent guidelines for casting a vote for their primary election to 20 people, including President Roh and party executives, such as the secretary general of the Democratic Party North Jeolla Province Regional Office and Jeonju city and Namwon city councils. It is obvious that the UNDP used the list of the DP executives without notification. This proves that the UNDP primary is unlawful,” said an official of the DP North Jeolla Province Regional Office. “At the moment, we have confirmed 20 identity theft cases. As we have launched an investigation team at the regional office level to find out how it happened, we believe that we will be able to reveal more identify theft cases,” said Kim Yeon-geun, a spokesman of the DP North Jeolla Province Regional Office.