PPP expels member for hanging Japanese flag on Independence Movement Day

SEOUL, March 24 (Yonhap) -- The ruling People Power Party (PPP) had one member quit the party after he was confirmed to be the man who flew the Japanese flag on a national holiday marking South Korea's independence movement against Japanese colonial rule, a lawmaker said Friday.

The person, who identified himself as a PPP member in a media interview, came under fire after hanging the Japanese flag outside his apartment in the central city of Sejong, 112 kilometers south of Seoul, on March 1, a national holiday marking the country's 1919 independence movement.

"He engaged in a stunt that goes completely against the common sense of ordinary party members," Rep. Lee Chul-gyu, the PPP's secretary general, said in an MBC radio interview. "We immediately convened a meeting of the party affairs committee and … took disciplinary action and asked him to leave the party, and he immediately quit."

Lee said the party has yet to establish a screening system for its nearly 4 million non-lawmaker members.

mlee@yna.co.kr
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