Jeong Won-oh Camp Denies Instagram Unfollow Rumor: "Never Followed Them"

The camp of Jeong Won-oh, the Democratic Party's Seoul mayoral candidate in the June 3 local elections, denied rumors Friday that he unfollowed DP leader Jung Chung-rae and former President Moon Jae-in on Instagram.

In a written statement issued the same day, Jeong's team said claims that he unfollowed both accounts are "not true," adding that he "was never following them to begin with."

Jung Chung-rae is currently under pressure from within and outside the party to forgo a reelection bid at the next party leadership convention, following the DP's failure to retake the Seoul mayorship and losses in several by-elections on June 3. Former DP leader Song Young-gil targeted Jung directly after the election, saying "the party leader bears all political responsibility." With Song and Prime Minister Kim Min-seok both named as potential candidates for the next party leadership race, some Democratic supporters had interpreted Jeong's non-follow of Jung as a signal that he too opposed Jung's reelection bid — a reading Jeong's camp rejected.

The camp also strongly denied a separate claim that Jeong had liked a post alleging that Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon violated political funds law in connection with Myeong Tae-kyun. The post reportedly claimed that, before the election, Myeong called Jeong's campaign and said Oh could be "blown away" by his trial, and advised them to prepare for a by-election. Jeong's team called the allegation baseless and asked the public to refrain from "reckless speculation."

In the June 3 Seoul mayoral race, Oh Se-hoon of the People Power Party received 2,575,819 votes (49.22 percent) against Jeong's 2,515,560 (48.07 percent), a margin of 1.15 percentage points. Jeong, a three-term district chief of Seongdong-gu — the district that administers Seongsu-dong — campaigned on the neighborhood's urban development success and published a book titled *Unfollow* alongside his candidacy, but Oh outpolled him in all four administrative precincts that make up Seongsu-dong.

Jung Chung-rae is the current Democratic Party of Korea floor leader; "언팔로우" here is the Korean borrowing of "unfollow" as a social media verb, not a proper noun.

Korean loanword for "unfollow"; here treated as political signal-reading fodder by party insiders