Pursuing unification of two Koreas is already too late, says Lee

Ruling Democratic Party presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung heralded a major reshuffle of his election camp on Sunday, “I will continue to make Lee Jae-myung’s Democratic Party, rather than the Democratic Party’s Lee Jae-myung.” “Pursuing unification (of the two Koreas) is already too late,” Lee said the previous day. “I hope that we approach the issue practically rather than politically.” The candidate is making a string of remarks differentiating his stance from that of the incumbent Moon Jae-in administration.

“I will return to square one and will start from scratch. Restarting the election preparation committee, I will run speedily and nimbly towards what the public wants,” Lee said in a Facebook post on Sunday. “I think I must have been complacent with and stuck in the big vessel of the Democratic Party. Going forward, I will admit that wrong things are wrong and that deficient things are deficient, and will start from scratch in a truly humbly manner.”

Lee has taken a step further from his previous indirect criticisms of his election camp through his remarks “The camp is they Roman troops that have never participated in a battle,” and went so far as to express his commitment to comprehensively reshuffle the camp in person. When visiting Hwaji Market in Nonsan, North Chungcheong Province on Saturday, Lee reflected on past mistakes, saying, “Even Lee Jae-myung failed to live up to the public’s aspiration for change and reform.”

In the wake of Lee’s repeated criticisms, the Democratic Party assembled an emergency meeting of its lawmakers and discussed measures including providing Lee with full authority to reshuffle the election camp. The party’s leader Song Young-gil also wrote in his Facebook post, “Let’s empty everything, and start completely anew by following the lesson of ‘humble mind’ and ‘humble acts’ (as the late Chinese leader Mao Zedong ordered ranking officials and their children to work at farms and factories).”

Lee also said in an interview with a YouTube channel, “I will consider a plan to delegate candidate Lee the full authority for reform and reshuffle.”


Sung-Hwi Kang yolo@donga.com · Sung-Yeol Yoo ryu@donga.com