The Rebuilding Korea Party and Kim Yong-nam Spar Over Remarks on the Itaewon Disaster

The Rebuilding Korea Party criticized former lawmaker Kim Yongnam, who is running in the byelection for the Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi constituency, for making false claims regarding his remarks about the Itaewon disaster. Kim's side countered, calling it nitpicking. At a briefing in the National Assembly on the 5th, Innovation Party senior spokesperson Park Byeongeon argued that it was not true that candidate Kim had said in the past that he had not blamed the cause of the Itaewon disaster on the protest. The Rebuilding Korea Party has pointed out that former lawmaker Kim made remarks on a 2022 broadcast to the effect that rallies and marches had an impact on the direct cause of the disaster, and has been demanding an apology. In response, Kim's side explained that he meant not that the protest itself was the cause, but that the government's deployment of police force was the problem. The camp countered that the Rebuilding Korea Party was waging a political attack by bringing up a single sentence from an old remark.