Opposition: "Lee’s ‘Israel X’ post is an unprecedented diplomatic disaster"

The People Power Party (PPP) on the 14th sharply criticized President Lee Jae-myung of South Korea for repeatedly posting about Israel on X (formerly Twitter). The party denounced it as "a diplomatic disaster of historic proportions that will go down in the annals of South Korean diplomacy."
At the floor strategy meeting that day, PPP parliamentary leader Song Eon-seok said this after President Lee shared a video of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva condemning Israel. Song remarked, "Must the unbearable lightness of his fingers and the shame that reaches to our very bones be borne by the people?"
Song noted, "The post in question may no longer be visible on President Lee’s X account, whether because it was deleted or removed, but screenshots are circulating on social media." He then demanded an explanation, asking, "What did it mean for President Lee to share a video of President Lula’s remarks, and if it was hastily deleted, what were the reasons and circumstances?"
He went on, "Posts on the President’s social networking service (SNS) accounts are effectively our country’s policy stance and guidelines, seen in real time by people around the world, and they may qualify as official state records." He pointed out, "Posts on sensitive diplomatic and security issues must be drafted and managed with great care after expert review. They are not something that can be written impulsively at any time and then simply deleted."
Earlier, on the 10th, President Lee Jae-myung shared a video purportedly showing the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) dropping bodies on a battlefield and wrote, "There is no difference between the massacre of Jews and killings committed during wartime." The video later turned out to have been filmed in September 2024. As controversy grew, he added, "International humanitarian law must be observed under all circumstances."
Regarding this, Song argued, "What the public is asking is not about universal human rights and values, but how fake news ended up being posted on the President’s SNS." He continued, "People are asking the President to dispel the suspicion that he was, so to speak, duped by fake news."
Song also took aim at Democratic Party of Korea leader Jung Chung-rae, who had praised President Lee’s related post as having "marked a milestone in the history of South Korean diplomacy." Song blasted this as "mindless flattery and sophistry that will go down in the annals of political history."
As for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel lodging a protest with the South Korean government, Song stressed, "The fact that the President posted fake news on SNS and then faced condemnation from a foreign government is a colossal diplomatic catastrophe that will be remembered as one of the worst in our country’s diplomatic history."
He added, "President Lee Jae-myung has said that universal human rights must be respected and that aggressive wars must be rejected, and I agree with that." He then said, "I hope he will also boldly demand an apology from the North Korean regime for the June 25 North Korean invasion that triggered the Korean War, the sinking of ROKS Cheonan, and the 2010 bombardment of Yeonpyeong Island, all of which were acts of aggressive war that took the lives of innocent people."
Meanwhile, PPP leader Jang Dong-hyeok departed for Washington, D.C., on the 11th and is currently on a visit to the United States. Lawmaker Cho Jung-hun, who left later and flew out on the 14th, criticized, "Because of the Lee Jae-myung administration’s diplomacy without principles, South Korea–United States relations are in a very precarious state." He added, "Even in the face of an official protest by Israel’s Foreign Ministry, he insists that he is right. This helps neither peace in the Middle East nor our alliance, including with the United States."
Cho went on to say, "President Lee Jae-myung’s personal thoughts should be kept in his diary," and urged, "The President’s SNS accounts should be filled with diplomacy befitting the stature of the Republic of Korea."

haeram@fnnews.com Lee Hae-ram Reporter