Lee invokes the politically charged word 'impeachment' to rebuff critics; Cheong Wa Dae says AI was used as a fact-checking tool, not a governance guide

President Lee Jae Myung cheers on students at an autumn sports day held at Wanggung Elementary School in Iksan, North Jeolla Province, on Thursday. [Yonhap]
President Lee Jae Myung cheers on students at an autumn sports day held at Wanggung Elementary School in Iksan, North Jeolla Province, on Thursday. [Yonhap]

President Lee Jae Myung said Thursday that abandoning oversight of the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency would violate the Constitution and the Government Organization Act — and constitute grounds for impeachment. He added that it would also amount to a criminal offense of dereliction of duty.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Lee said the Constitution and the Government Organization Act explicitly require all agencies — whether the Public Prosecution Service, the Korea Meteorological Administration or the National Fire Agency — to operate under the direction and supervision of the president and prime minister. "Presidential oversight of state affairs is both a right and a responsibility," he said.

He went on to challenge critics, asking whether they were demanding that he violate the Constitution and the law by forgoing oversight of the agency, or that such oversight be conducted behind closed doors rather than in open meetings. "The notion that excluding the agency from open cabinet meetings ensures political neutrality is utterly illogical," he said.

The remarks came amid growing criticism from opposition politicians and some in the legal community over the attendance of Serious Crimes Investigation Agency Director Kim Ji-yong at a cabinet meeting, with concerns raised about political neutrality and the independence of investigative authority. By invoking "impeachment" — a term he would normally avoid — Lee mounted a direct and forceful rebuttal.

Lee also addressed the backlash that followed his post on Wednesday, in which he cited a response from the generative AI tool Gemini to label as "unconstitutional sophistry" the argument that the heads of the Public Prosecution Service and the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency should not attend cabinet meetings. Critics had accused him of governing the country based on AI-generated answers.

Lee said he had not cited Gemini out of ignorance. "I cited it so people could feel just how elementary, factually wrong and low-level that argument was," he said, adding that demanding the agency be excluded from open cabinet meetings ran counter to the Constitution, the law and common sense.

Cheong Wa Dae had earlier defended the president, saying he had used AI as a tool to look up facts and that claims he was relying on AI to run the country were a distortion.

Presidential communications secretary Seong Gi-hong told a morning briefing that Lee had not asked AI how to govern but had used it to verify the specifics of legal provisions. "He asked Gemini about constitutional and statutory clauses and then stated his own view on them," Seong said, questioning whether it was accurate to call the episode "an unprecedented case of citing an AI response as the basis for governing the country."


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