People Power Party lawmaker Yoon Sang-hyun [Yonhap]
People Power Party lawmaker Yoon Sang-hyun [Yonhap]

People Power Party lawmaker Yoon Sang-hyun on Sunday criticized President Lee Jae-myung over the president's invocation of the concept of "ethics of responsibility," asking, "Why is responsibility always someone else's burden?" He said the standard "only carries meaning when it is directed at oneself, not at others."

Writing on his Facebook page Sunday, Yoon said President Lee had posted a message on social media citing German sociologist Max Weber's concept of the ethics of responsibility, under the title "The ruling party, the opposition, and political accountability." He added that political circles had interpreted the post as a warning directed at members of the ruling party.

Yoon said Weber held that a politician must bear full personal responsibility for his own actions — that he can neither refuse that responsibility nor transfer it to others. "That is clearly consistent with the message the president posted on social media," Yoon said. "But the question is whether President Lee is applying that same ethics of responsibility to himself."

He said the ruling camp was seeking to hold only National Election Commission bureaucrats accountable for what he described as the near-collapse of the agency's administration. He noted that President Lee had previously argued it was just to hold chief executives liable under the Serious Accidents Punishment Act.

"Then who is the top executive responsible for the state of the National Election Commission today?" Yoon said. He added that young people with no political power had been gathering in public squares day after day to demand accountability from the state, and that not only university students but also middle and high school students in uniforms had been setting aside their studies to hold up signs and raise their voices.

"A politician in a position of leadership must be prepared to bear full responsibility not only for the consequences that flow directly from his decisions, but even for unintended side effects," Yoon said. "Is that not the very point Weber was trying to make to President Lee?"

Yoon said public trust in elections as a democratic institution was being seriously shaken, and that democracy is sustained not by outcomes alone but by the people's confidence in the process. "Has the president considered how hollow his words about a politician's ethics of responsibility must sound to citizens who feel their very right to political participation is not being properly guaranteed?" he said.

He said that if President Lee truly wished to speak of Weber's ethics of responsibility, the president should be open to every procedure needed to resolve public doubts. "There is no reason to refuse an independent special prosecutor or a parliamentary investigation led by the opposition," Yoon said. "The ethics of responsibility lies not in avoiding scrutiny but in willingly submitting to the most rigorous scrutiny of all."


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