SEOUL – President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea and his predecessor, Moon Jae-in, are both dog lovers. Still, they couldn’t agree on how to care for two dogs given to their country by North Korea.
The animals, now orphaned, ended up in a zoo this month.
The feud between the two presidents goes beyond the fate of a pair of white Pungsan, a breed of dog native to North Korea. Named Songgang and Gomi, the dogs are the latest victims of an internal battle between two leaders whose opposing views have come to symbolize South Korea’s history of political deadlock.
North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un gave the dogs to Mr Moon in 2018, when Mr Moon visited Pyongyang for summit talks during a rare period of rapprochement in the Korean peninsula. Last month, Mr. Moon gave up the dogs, saying that Mr. Yoon’s government did not want him to keep them. Mr Yoon’s office denied those claims, saying discussions were underway to determine how to care for the dogs and who should pay for them, as they technically belonged to the South Korean government.
With no prospect of a speedy agreement, the dogs were transferred to an animal hospital for a temporary stay last month and found a new home last weekend at a municipal zoo in the southern city of Gwangju. But the dispute between Mr. Moon and Mr. Yoon’s government goes deeper than what appears to be a petty financial dispute over a pair of fangs. The custody battle over the two dogs is an example of the ways in which political differences in South Korea often become public spectacles.
In a recurring pattern in the country, a new government has often sought to strengthen its position by tarnishing its predecessor’s legacy and ensnaring former officials in criminal investigations and other scandals after they leave office.
Of the four former presidents who have ruled the country over the past two decades, one – Roh Moo-hyun – committed suicide while under investigation for possible corruption. Two – Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye – ended up in prison for corruption. All were investigated after leaving office and targeted by their political enemies who took power.
Mr Yoon has repeatedly vowed to investigate wrongdoings he said were committed by Mr Moon’s government. Mr Moon and his liberal opposition, the Democratic Party, have accused Mr Yoon of seeking “political revenge” to distract voters from his low approval ratings. What makes the Moon-Yoon fracas different from past feuds is that the two were trusted allies to go after Mr. Lee and Mrs. Park and put them in jail.
“Prosecutors must stop acting as hounds for political power,” Kim Eui-kyeom, a spokesman for the Democratic Party, said last week. Mr. Yoon, he added, “must also stop exercising political vengeance to consolidate his base.”
Prosecutors have already arrested Mr Moon’s former defense minister and his former national security adviser on criminal charges. (A court later allowed the former defense secretary to stay out of prison while he stood trial.) On Wednesday, prosecutors questioned another former Moon official, the director of the National Intelligence Agency, for possible criminal charges stemming from allegations that she had mishandled involving North Korea. Those under investigation have accused prosecutors of politicizing national security issues on Mr Yoon’s behalf.
“I sincerely hope that they will no longer drag the National Intelligence Service into the political scene,” said Park Jie-won, the former spy chief under Mr. Moon, to reporters before presenting himself to prosecutors for questioning on Wednesday. Prosecutors have also indicted associates close to new Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung on charges of collecting illegal campaign funds.
Mr. Moon once trusted Mr. Yoon enough to make him Attorney General while in office. The two men soon fell out over Mr. Moon’s attempts to curtail the power of prosecutors long accused of meddling in politics. Mr. Yoon resigned from Mr. Moon’s government and went on to win the March presidential election by a razor-thin margin as the candidate for the conservative People Power Party, defeating Mr. Lee.
As president, Mr. Yoon’s approval rating hovered around 30 percent after his administration was hit by a host of scandals that also involved cabinet-appointed officials, presidential staff and his wife, Kim Keon-hee. like the recent Halloween crush that killed more than 150 people in Seoul.
The office of Mr. Yoon denies that the investigations are politically motivated and says investigations into Mr. Moon were a matter of human rights and “national sovereignty”.
The investigations stemmed from a case in 2020 when a South Korean fisheries official went missing from his ship and was later found in its waters by the North. South Korea accused the North of killing the official and burning his body at sea. The Department of Defense and the Coast Guard announced at the time that the official, Lee Dae-joon, was suspected of attempting to defect to the north.
But after Mr. Yoon took office, both agencies reversed their findings, saying there was not enough evidence to consider Mr. Lee a defector.
Prosecutors said Mr. Moon falsified documents and deleted intelligence reports to get Mr. depicting Lee as a turncoat in order to soften the backlash over his death and minimize its impact on relations between the two. Koreas. (Reducing tensions with North Korea was one of Mr. Moon’s signature policy goals, while Mr. Yoon has taken a more confrontational stance toward the North.) Mr. Moon’s former aides all denied the allegations and stuck to their position. findings about Mr. Lee.
“At the time, it was impossible for our security services to establish the facts clearly, and they tried as best they could to determine what had happened based on all available information and the circumstances.” Moon said in a statement this month. “But after the change of government, the agencies reversed their decision, although the information and circumstances remained the same.”
The fate of the two North Korean dogs also became an issue after Mr. Yoon won the election. By law, gifts to the president belong to the state. But the Presidential Archives, which would own the dogs, had no kennel. When he was president-elect, Mr. Yoon expresses support for the idea that Mr. Moon should continue to care for the dogs in the interests of the animals’ welfare.
On Mr. Moon’s last day in office, the presidential records informally entrusted the dogs to him. But there were no further attempts to make the transfer legally binding or to distribute financial and other support for the dogs. Mr. Moon blamed Mr. Yoon’s office for the delay.
“The presidential office seems negative about entrusting the Pungsan dogs to former president Moon,” Mr. Moon’s office said on Facebook last month. “If that’s the case, we can be cool about it,” it said, adding that it had no choice but to return the dogs to the state, even though Mr. Moon hurt to part with the dogs that he had. raised for four years
As a result, the dogs had no home until the presidential records arranged for the zoo in Gwangju to take care of them. On Monday, the dogs, with name tags around their necks, were shown to journalists and citizens at the zoo. “Gomi and Songgang are a symbol of peace and South-North Korean reconciliation and cooperation,” Gwangju Mayor Kang Gijung told reporters. “We will raise them well, as if we were growing a seed for peace.”