Original article. Frankly, I’d also be pretty upset at my employer telling my I couldn’t join whatever party I pleased.

The Seoul Central District Prosecutor’s Office has announced the arrest without detention of 273 members of the Korean Teachers and Education Workers’ Union (전국교직원노동조합) and 전국공무원노동조합 (a union for public servants) on charges of illegally taking part in political activities.

That concludes the investigation of teachers and public servants’ illegal political activities afer just over 100 days.

According to prosecutors, they are accused of joining the Democratic Labor Party (민주노동당) and supporting it financially after public servants were forbidden to join political parties.

Investigators found that they deposited over 50 million won (US $44, 705)  in a secret bank account for the DLP and over 100 of them registered on a DLP voting site as party members.

Last week prosecutors served a search warrant on the membership rolls of the DLP to ascertain whether the accused were members or not, but the decision to prosecute after discovering of the financial support and voting site memberships.

But the two unions completely denied the charges and promised to contest them in court, saying, “absolutely none of our members joined a political party or donated money.”

Prosecutors and police plan to continue the investigation to determine whether the charge members of the DLP and served a search warrant on computer hard drives containing its membership rolls in January.