South Korean president did not insult US lawmakers, presidency argues


South Korea’s president has denied making insulting remarks about the United States, his main security ally, saying through his office that they were mistranslated, prompting Friday September 23 a new wave of disbelief.

A TV camera caught Yoon Suk-yeol making disparaging remarks about US lawmakers after a meeting with US President Joe Biden at the International Global Fund (IMF) in New York on Wednesday.

Compromising recording

How could Biden not lose face if these motherfuckers don’t get it through Congress?“, seems to say the South Korean president on this recording broadcast by the South Korean channel MBC, about Joe Biden’s proposal to increase his financial assistance to the Global Fund, which requires the approval of Congress.

Presidential spokeswoman Kim Eun-hye, however, claimed that the South Korean president “had no reason to talk about the United States or say the word Biden“. During a press briefing in New York on Thursday, Ms. Kim argued that Yoon Suk-yeol did not mention “Bidenbut actually uttered a similar-sounding Korean word, and that he was referring to South Korean lawmakers, not Americans.

Posted on YouTube, the video has been viewed more than five million times in less than a day, and the word “fuckersemployed by Mr. Yoon was the most popular hashtag on Twitter in South Korea on Thursday.

A ruling party parliamentarian said the TV channel, which first reported the remarks, should be prosecuted for “damaged the irreplaceable alliance between the United States and South Korea“.

Online, however, many expressed doubts about the government’s response. “It is utterly shameful and disturbing to our children that the presidency came up with such an excuse“wrote a surfer on YouTube, when another published:”I’ve listened to it ten times. It’s Biden, that’s for sure.»

Yoon’s official denial amounts to telling South Koreans that they are “hard of hearing“Launched opposition Democratic Party parliamentarian Chun Jae-soon on Friday.

Washington has about 27,000 soldiers stationed in the country to deal with the threat posed by North Korea, which has nuclear weapons. Mr. Yoon, a former prosecutor, is struggling with a low approval rating, at 28% according to a latest poll released on Friday.

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