President Lee Jae Myung and first lady Kim Hye-kyung learn how to shoot a traditional bow at an archery venue in Ulaanbaatar during the Naadam festival on Saturday (local time), as part of their state visit to Mongolia. [Yonhap]
President Lee Jae Myung and first lady Kim Hye-kyung learn how to shoot a traditional bow at an archery venue in Ulaanbaatar during the Naadam festival on Saturday (local time), as part of their state visit to Mongolia. [Yonhap]

South Korea's ruling and opposition parties traded sharp accusations Thursday over a video clip showing first lady Kim Hye-kyung shaking her hand after a handshake with Mongolian President Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh during President Lee Jae Myung's recent state visit to Mongolia.

The opposition People Power Party said the gesture was disrespectful to a foreign head of state, calling it a "national embarrassment" and a breach of diplomatic protocol.

The ruling Democratic Party of Korea fired back, accusing critics of spreading "fake news" through "malicious editing" that stripped the footage of its context, and announced legal action.

The Democratic Party's special committee on disinformation said Thursday that People Power Party lawmaker Ju Jin-woo and those who spread the clip had "tarnished the achievements of summit diplomacy and seriously damaged the first lady's reputation by disseminating false information." The committee said it was filing a complaint against Ju and 22 YouTube channels for "spreading fabricated footage with the sole purpose of defaming the first lady and harming the national interest, without even a minimum of fact-checking."

Democratic Party lawmaker Kim Dong-a, a member of the committee, said the scene was not a simple greeting but a handshake offered to comfort Kim Hye-kyung after pain from an archery activity. "In the original footage, the first lady had drawn a high-tension traditional Mongolian bow with her bare hands and was naturally shaking out the numbness in her hand," Kim said.

Kim said the Mongolian president, seeing this, took her hand in a gesture of concern and comfort. "Twisting a natural physiological reaction — continuing to shake one's hand right after a comforting handshake to ease pain — into a sign of displeasure is clearly malicious manipulation," Kim said.

Kim added that those who spread the edited clip had "cleverly cut out the archery scene that caused the pain in the first place," deleting the earlier portion showing her discomfort and highlighting only the brief moment of hand-shaking to stoke public opinion as if it expressed displeasure toward the other party.

Kim called the editing "a textbook case of malicious manipulation — deliberately concealing the cause-and-effect relationship to mislead public opinion with fabricated facts" and called it "a petty criminal act that reduces the scene of summit diplomacy to a tool of political warfare."

Kim pressed the point further, calling it "intentional defamation without fact-checking" and saying critics had "done nothing but sensational smearing without the most basic verification, even though the original footage is available for anyone to see."

Kim singled out Ju, noting that he is a former prosecutor who served as legal secretary in the presidential office under the Yoon Suk Yeol administration. Despite bearing "a heavier responsibility than anyone to verify facts, he took the lead in spreading the clip and calling it a national embarrassment," Kim said.

Ju rebuffed the criticism on Facebook, asking whether "the 'gag-order dictatorship' of Lee Jae Myung's Cheong Wa Dae is already starting," and again targeted Kim Hye-kyung, saying: "Even if her hand was numb, shaking it right in front of the other person's face is a clear breach of diplomatic etiquette."

"She would have been more careful in front of President Donald Trump or voters during an election," Ju said. "Cheong Wa Dae attacks you for criticizing a diplomatic breach, and the Democratic Party takes legal action. Stop fawning over power."

Ju had earlier used blunt language to criticize the first lady, saying: "What is this hand-shaking after spending taxpayer money to go all the way to Mongolia? It is the worst kind of rudeness — forgetting the weight of being the president's wife and instantly dragging down South Korea's national dignity."

Ju also announced Thursday that he had launched a group constitutional challenge against the revised Telecommunications Business Act.

"We are filing a constitutional complaint and a motion to suspend the enforcement of this law that gags the people," Ju said, adding: "Is there really no better model to follow than turning our proud Republic of Korea into a gag-order dictatorship like North Korea or China?"

Ju said the revised act violated "the principle of popular sovereignty, the prohibition on prior censorship, and the freedoms of expression and thought."


shindw@heraldcorp.com