Yoon Geon-young of the Democratic Party of Korea [Yonhap]
Yoon Geon-young of the Democratic Party of Korea [Yonhap]

Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker Yoon Geon-young pushed back Thursday against writer Yu Si-min's continued criticism of President Lee Jae Myung, saying: "Even a vaccine shot is fine once or twice — but who would feel good about getting jabbed over and over?"

Appearing on MBC Radio's "Kim Jong-bae's Focus" on Thursday, Yoon said he still viewed Yu's recent remark — that President Lee is likely the leader of the so-called "New Lee Jae Myung" faction — as a "vaccine shot in the broad sense."

However, Yoon urged Yu to hold back rather than repeat the criticism, saying Yu had already made his point forcefully on several recent occasions and that his message had been sufficiently conveyed.

"Even the best medicine will upset your stomach if you take too much of it," Yoon added, asking Yu to trust the Democratic Party's capacity for self-correction and to watch how things unfold.

Yoon had raised a similar point on his Facebook page on Saturday, describing Yu's criticism as something the party should "treat as a vaccine shot" and acknowledging that warnings about the concentration of power and the risk of corruption were worth heeding.

His latest remarks, however, appeared to signal that Yu's increasingly sharp attacks had prompted Yoon to call for restraint.

Yoon also said he found Yu's reading of President Lee's "structural majority" theory hard to follow. Yu had argued that Lee was trying to shake up the centrist and conservative camps to engineer a large-scale political realignment, but Yoon interpreted the concept differently — as an effort to level what he called a "tilted playing field" so that neither side holds an unfair advantage.

"Would the kind of three-party merger Yu cited from 1990 even be possible today?" Yoon said. "I think it's impossible, and I don't believe the Democratic Party has the drive to pursue anything like that."

Meanwhile, Yu used his YouTube channel "2-Minute News" on Tuesday to argue that the confusion surrounding the prosecution reform process ultimately stemmed from President Lee's own judgment.

Yu had also said on a YouTube broadcast on July 15 that Lee was "heading down a path of inevitable failure," continuing a streak of public criticism directed at the president in recent weeks.


min3654@heraldcorp.com