Prosecutors on Tuesday morning raided Gyeonggi Province Governor Lee Jae-myung's house in Bundang amid suspicions that Lee's wife used a pseudonymous Twitter handle to spread fake news about President Moon Jae-in and other political rivals of her husband. Prosecutors and investigators from the Suwon District Prosecutors' Office began the raid on Lee's home in Seongnam, south of Seoul, at around 9 a.m.







(Yonhap)

About the same time, another group of prosecutors searched Lee's office in Suwon in the presence of the governor and his lawyer.The raid was apparently intended to retrieve an iPhone used by Lee's wife, Kim Hye-kyung, from July 2016 until April this year, when allegations of her involvement in online slandering of Lee's election rivals surfaced.Kim, who is suspected of posting slanderous messages on social media sites via her mobile phone, changed her iPhone and phone number in April and told police investigators later that she was not aware of its whereabouts.Police recently identified the owner of the Twitter ID "Hyekyunggung Ms. Kim," who left numerous defamatory comments before and during elections in recent years, as Kim.Police suspect she wrote comments in December 2016 against President Moon Jae-in, then Lee's potential rival in the Democratic Party's primary for the 2017 presidential election.
Prosecutors raid the house of Gyeonggi Province governor Lee Jae-myung amid suspicions that his wife used a pseudonymous Twitter handle to spread fake news about President Moon Jae-in and other political rivals of her husband.