People Power lawmaker says Supreme Court nominee failed to pay rent for 34 months

People Power Party lawmaker Joo Jin-woo has called on Supreme Court nominee Kim Sung-soo to pay allegedly evaded gift taxes and immediately withdraw from consideration, while adding a new allegation over unpaid rent.

Joo said Kim lived in an apartment in Seoul’s Dogok-dong after moving there in June 2021 and had agreed to pay his brother-in-law 800,000 won a month. According to Joo, records submitted by Kim show a final payment of 1.6 million won on Nov. 2, 2023, with no further monthly payments recorded. That would leave 27.2 million won unpaid from November 2023 through August, Joo said.

A sublease agreement signed by Kim and his brother-in-law in 2025 also specified the 800,000-won monthly payment, but Joo said payments did not resume. He questioned Kim’s explanation that the two men actually lived together in the Dogok apartment. Joo noted that the brother-in-law had lived separately in Pangyo while Kim’s family occupied the earlier apartment in Yeoksam-dong.

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The nominee should pay the evaded gift taxes and immediately resign as a Supreme Court nominee.

Joo also repeated his allegation that Kim had spent about a decade living in a Gangnam apartment owned by his brother-in-law through a “sublease of a sublease” arrangement. Kim lived there from February 2011 until 2021 before moving to the 43-pyeong Dogok Rexle complex, Joo said.

The lawmaker demanded phone-location records, credit-card statements and vehicle-entry logs to establish whether Kim and his brother-in-law really lived together. He said the arrangements amounted to free residence and gift-tax evasion, and again urged Kim to resign.

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Kim’s family alone lived in the apartment owned by his brother-in-law, and in Dogok-dong he did not even pay the 800,000 won monthly rent specified in the contract for nearly three years.