Official likens Baejaego baseball team's punishment to North Korea, questions May 18 'sacred status'

Lee Byung-tae, vice chairman of the Regulatory Rationalization Committee [Newsis]

Lee Byung-tae, vice chairman of the Regulatory Rationalization Committee, strongly criticized the Korea Baseball Softball Association's decision to ban Baejaego High School's baseball team from competition for six months, saying the handling of the case reminded him of North Korea.

Lee had previously urged restraint on social media in May when government ministries joined a boycott campaign against Starbucks over its so-called "Tank Day" controversy, calling the move "a very dangerous measure."

Funeral wreaths placed in front of Baejaego High School in Gangdong-gu, Seoul, on Thursday criticize the school's baseball team after players chanted "Let's go to Starbucks" — a taunt directed at Gwangju Ilgo during a high school baseball tournament on Monday. The Korea Baseball Softball Association convened its Sports Fairness Committee on Thursday and handed down a six-month ban on the Baejaego baseball team from national competitions. [Newsis]

In a Facebook post Thursday, Lee said that "many religions, citing doctrines created and manipulated by humans, have banished those who questioned those doctrines as heretics guilty of blasphemy — and burned them alive," adding that "where a sacred domain exists, executions for blasphemy follow."

He then asked, "What does it say about our society that students who used the Starbucks controversy to mock a rival team during a high school baseball game are being treated this way?" and said, "This is how May 18 has become such a sacred, untouchable domain in this country."

Lee said the students' actions "could be understood as satire of the Starbucks controversy itself, not an attack on May 18," lamenting that "because of the sacralization of history, even a near-prank-level act of mischief by young students cannot be tolerated, and adults have turned it into politics." He also questioned whether a six-month competition ban was "truly the best educational solution for helping these young players reflect on their wrongdoing."

Lee expressed concerns over the association's decision to impose what he called an unreasonable punishment on young students for a minor act of mischief, saying, "This looks less like South Korea and more like North Korea, where people wail at the sight of a newspaper bearing Kim Il-sung's photo getting wet in the rain. Does a world with no room for tolerance really look that appealing?"

husn7@heraldcorp.com