With X posts, Lee's rare show of temper stirs debate at home and abroad

Expressions of anger were relatively few and far between in President Lee Jae Myung's first 1,000 posts on X since taking office, but those flashes of frustration have repeatedly stirred political and diplomatic disputes.

Neutral expressions in which Lee mentioned specific subjects without conveying emotion were the most common, appearing 3,279 times across the 1,000 posts. Joy followed at 400 instances, anger at 101, sadness at 93, anxiety at 22 and confusion at one.

Lee, who took office on June 4 last year, reached 1,000 posts on X at around 6 p.m. on Oct. 12, excluding simple reposts but including original posts, quoted posts and replies. The JoongAng Ilbo and Kyungpook National University's Institute for Basic Social Science analyzed the posts using an information extraction process called named entity recognition to identify people and organizations with political significance or connections to political events. The researchers then used an open-source AI model to analyze Lee's attitudes and emotions toward all 3,896 identified entities.

When classified by attitude rather than emotion, 2,128 references, or 54.6 percent, were positive, meaning Lee expressed favorable or supportive views toward the subjects. Another 1,591 references, or 40.8 percent, were neutral, while 177, or 4.5 percent, were negative or critical.

While the majority of references were positive, Lee's comments about political parties and the media were more frequently negative. Among references to political parties, 17.9 percent were positive and 35.7 percent were negative. For references to the media, just 5.9 percent were positive, while 47.1 percent were negative.

The number of references in which Lee conveyed both a negative attitude and anger was even smaller, at 83, or 2.1 percent of the total.

These were primarily directed at owners of multiple homes, prosecutors and specific companies, including Starbucks over a controversy involving its "Tank Day" promotion. Some also involved foreign countries, including Israel and Ukraine.

While sparse, such references were associated with significant political and diplomatic disputes.

On Feb. 5, Lee criticized prosecutors over evidence used in a corruption case involving a redevelopment project in Wirye, which spans Songpa District in southern Seoul and Gyeonggi's Hanam and Seongnam. The issue centered on a recording linked to a separate development scandal in Daejang-dong that prosecutors interpreted as containing a reference to Lee and a close aide.

"They even went so far as to alter the Daejang-dong recordings from 'a discussion about Wirye New Town' to 'a discussion about a senior figure' and submit them as evidence in an attempt to implicate me in a case that had no legal basis," the president wrote.

The post came after prosecutors decided not to appeal a ruling in the Wirye redevelopment corruption case, an option for the prosecution under Korean law.

"He is once again pressuring prosecutors and the judiciary over evidence in a trial in which he himself is implicated," People Power Party (PPP) chief spokesperson Park Sung-hoon said in criticism of Lee's remarks.

The president was indicted in connection with the same case, but his trial has been suspended since he took office.

Lee also criticized media coverage of the potential side effects of tighter regulations on people who own multiple homes.

"Isn't siding with owners of multiple homes just to undermine the government the kind of thing only a selfish group would do — one that is okay with seeing the country collapse if it means attacking political opponents?" Lee wrote on Feb. 1.

The following day, Lee took aim at the PPP after the party compared his administration's housing policies to a system of government-controlled housing distribution.

"How about putting an end to both the ruinous defense of real estate speculation and the outdated practice of branding political opponents as North Korea sympathizers?" Lee wrote on Feb. 2.

Lee also expressed anger over Starbucks' "Tank Day" promotion, which drew criticism for allegedly mocking the May 18 Democratization Movement.

He described the marketing campaign as "an advertisement that insults and mocks the death of pro-democracy activist Park Jong-chul under police torture and the June Democratic Struggle that it sparked" on May 20.

Foreign policy matters were no exception.

On April 10, Lee shared a video posted by an X user who claimed it showed Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers torturing a Palestinian child before throwing the child from a building's rooftop.

"There is no difference between the forced sexual enslavement of comfort women, the Holocaust and killings during wartime that we condemn," Lee wrote.

The video was later found to show IDF soldiers disposing of a body in an incident that had occurred about two years earlier. The post sparked a diplomatic dispute after Israel's Foreign Ministry called Lee's comparison to the Holocaust "unacceptable."

Lee corrected his description of the video and acknowledged it was old footage, but continued to criticize Israel.

"It is disappointing that they don't take a moment to reflect on the criticism from people around the world who have suffered from their repeated violations of human rights and international law," Lee wrote on April 11.

Another post classified as expressing anger was Lee's Oct. 2 demand for a public apology from Ukraine after the country unilaterally disclosed the repatriation of North Korean prisoners of war and denied that there had been an agreement to keep the matter confidential.

"Even Franklin D. Roosevelt's fireside chats were a sophisticated propaganda strategy based on advance planning and political calculations," Kim Yong-chan, a professor at Yonsei University's Department of Communication, said. "Considering the influence the president wields both domestically and internationally, unplanned and impulsive social media posts carry constant risks."

Eom Ki-hong, a professor at Kyungpook National University's Department of Political Science and Diplomacy, said a president's negative remarks not only fuel political conflict but also leave a lasting impression on the public.

"Given the volatile nature of negative issues, presidential messages should always be carefully crafted before being communicated to the public," Eom added.

BY HA JUN-HO [[email protected]]