Fear-mongering mayor

Lee Jae-myung, the mayor of Seongnam city in Gyeonggi Province, has overcome many difficulties and challenges to become a mayor. When he was a teenager, Lee got an industrial accident which broke his left wrist while working at a glove factory in Seongnam city. His left hand is crippled. Due to breathing in toxic chemicals at the factory, Lee lost the sense of smell. He entered the Department of Law at ChungAng University after passing the qualification tests for high school and college entrance. Lee passed the bar examination and became a lawyer. His provocative attitude to challenge common sense seems related to such difficulties that he had gone through.

Mayor Lee posted a link of Media Today’s article on Twitter, titled ‘Did North Korea really shoot first? Why couldn’t Yeoncheon residents hear the sound?’ The title gives an impression that the writer is suspicious of whether North Korea started shooting first. This article is now deleted by the order of the Korea Communication Standards Commission. In regards to the suicide note of a National Intelligence Service (NIS) employee who killed himself over a controversy concerning the NIS’ spying software purchase, Lee wrote on twitter on Jul.19 that ‘it does not look like a suicide note, no matter how hard I try to see that way.’ In December of 2014, he claimed that the actual owner of the deadly sunken ferry Sewol is not Cheonghaejin Marine but the NIS.

When a suspicion is not backed by others, someone who raises the suspicion becomes a fear monger. Shells of the anti-aircraft gun that North Korea fired to mountains in Yeoncheon are 14.5mm in diameter. Firing the anti-aircraft gun may make a loud sound. But shells make dull dropping sounds when they are dropped to mountains. Only those who never experienced firing of artillery would become suspicious of North Korea’s initiation of shooting for a reason that local residents didn’t hear the sound. Suspicion must be a method to find the truth. The suspicion itself must not be a goal.

Kyunghyang Daily News carried an editorial in criticism of the Supreme Court’s guilty verdict to former Prime Minister Han Myung-sook, calling it ‘a political trial.’ However, Kyunghyang Daily News has been left alone when conservative and progressive newspapers including Hankyoreh ran articles to acknowledge validity of the court decision. If Mayor Lee keeps raising suspicions which even young generations cannot support, being seized by the ideology that appealed to those who were born in the 1960s and have attended college in the 1980s, Lee will find himself alone spreading unrealistic rumors.

pisong@donga.com