President explains farmland probe background on social media, pushes back against press criticism

'I praised the minister's proposal — demands to quit SNS are absurd'

President Lee Jae Myung speaks at a Cabinet meeting held at Cheong Wa Dae on Tuesday. [Yonhap]
President Lee Jae Myung speaks at a Cabinet meeting held at Cheong Wa Dae on Tuesday. [Yonhap]

President Lee Jae Myung on Wednesday rebuffed criticism that he was shifting blame over his order to conduct a nationwide farmland survey, saying the probe was "not a wrongdoing but a reform measure that deserves praise."

Lee posted a message on X, formerly Twitter, titled "'Praising jjajangmyeon means disparaging jjamppong' — that era is arriving," in which he laid out a detailed account of how the nationwide farmland survey came about.

Lee said he had initially ordered an investigation into illegal speculative farmland in the Greater Seoul area — land purchased through false declarations of self-cultivation that was never actually farmed — when the agriculture minister proposed expanding the scope to a nationwide survey, noting it was a legal obligation that had been neglected for decades. Lee said he then personally ordered the full nationwide probe.

"The farmland survey is the core of an agricultural reform that must be done despite the backlash it will face," Lee said, adding that he had publicly credited the minister's proposal because it was "an excellent suggestion to carry out in one go what had been left undone for decades."

Lee drew a firm line against allegations that he was evading responsibility. "The farmland survey is not a wrongdoing but a reform measure that deserves praise, and the fact that the president personally ordered the investigation at an open Cabinet meeting is something the whole world knows," he said. "Even if someone else proposed it, that does not diminish the president's responsibility in the slightest."

Lee then criticized media outlets that framed his acknowledgment of the minister's role as blame-shifting. "Some outlets took the fact that I credited the minister's proposal and condemned it as an act of passing the buck," he said. "I question whether they actually watched the open Cabinet meeting footage and wrote their reports with even a minimum of journalistic ethics."

Lee also pushed back against calls for him to stop communicating directly with the public through social media. "Distorting the facts like this and then demanding I stop using SNS to speak directly with the people is like saying: 'Even if we hit you, don't resist — just take it,'" he said.

Lee closed by invoking a phrase from what he described as a time when "criticizing the president was a national sport," saying people then claimed that praising jjajangmyeon amounted to disparaging jjamppong. "But ultimately, it is the people who decide," he added.


sunpine@heraldcorp.com