Reform Party leader Lee Jun-seok speaks at the party's supreme council meeting at the National Assembly on Monday. [Yonhap]
Reform Party leader Lee Jun-seok speaks at the party's supreme council meeting at the National Assembly on Monday. [Yonhap]

Reform Party leader Lee Jun-seok on Monday called President Lee Jae Myung "unfit as a leader of the people and as the head of an organization" after the president ordered a review of a proposed overhaul of the individual savings account, or ISA, regime.

Speaking at the party's supreme council meeting at the National Assembly, Lee said the president had distanced himself from his own government by publicly asking why the ISA reform had been pushed forward without proper preparation. "The president scolded the government as if he were a third party," Lee said.

Lee also turned his fire on Kim Yong-beom, the Cheong Wa Dae policy chief, saying Kim had failed to scrutinize individual policies as his job required. "Last month he blamed retail investors for the drop in share prices, which only deepened market anxiety," Lee said.

"If he neglects what he should be doing and keeps causing controversy, the right call is to remove him," Lee added. "Otherwise, no matter how much the president points the finger at his own government as if it were someone else's, all the arrows and all the responsibility will come back to the president."

Lee also raised concerns about policy consistency. Speaking to reporters after the meeting, he said President Lee Jae Myung had recently begun publicly rebuking policies from his own government as if detached from it. "It is proof that things are not running properly," he said.

"Policies should be thoroughly reviewed internally before being announced — not reversed within days," Lee said. He added that the administration had initially boasted about a rising Kospi as if it were an achievement, but was now "revealing amateurism across every policy area, from real estate to stocks to tax law."

Asked about the party's recent outreach efforts — including his own return to YouTube and floor leader Cheon Ha-ram's enlistment at a Nonsan training center — Lee said Cheon had been assigned to the National Assembly's defense committee and was likely trying to identify policy needs from within the lives of service members. On the YouTube resumption, he said an AI-based party management system the party had been developing internally had stabilized, freeing up the bandwidth to restart the channel.


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