MEXICO CITY — President Lee Jae-myung invoked the fight over the National Security Law during the Roh Moo-hyun administration to argue head-on that competing to look ideologically pure can wreck the substance of reform. The remarks are increasingly read as aimed at hard-liners in the ruling camp, including writer Yoo Si-min, who has escalated his criticism of Lee over prosecution reform by accusing him of "deceiving the public."
With the presidential office having publicly expressed regret over Yoo's remarks and the possibility of legal action under discussion, analysts say the president's decision to raise a past failure of reform himself amounts to a political warning that he will not retreat further.
Lee, who is on a state visit to Mexico, said at a dinner meeting with Korean residents in Mexico City on the 24th that reform requires restraint. "You have to hold back to a reasonable degree, but if you go too fast, too far and too abruptly, you run into a backlash," he said. Turning to the security law dispute under the Roh government, he said: "There was a chance to scrap the clause on praising and encouraging the enemy. At the time the governing and opposition parties had all but agreed that repealing the National Security Law in its entirety was too much, so they would at least delete a few of the toxic clauses. Then someone suddenly began objecting, saying, 'Where in the world do you repeal only half of a law?'" He added: "So that provision is still alive, and recently someone was subjected to a search and seizure. Similar situations are happening even now."
Lee did not name anyone, but political circles read the "someone" as a reference to Yoo. Yoo was in fact classified in 2004 as a leading advocate of abolishing the National Security Law and a hard-liner within the Uri Party, then the governing party.
At the time, Uri Party chairman Lee Bu-young and Grand National Party leader Park Geun-hye worked out a tentative compromise under which the toxic clauses of the National Security Law would be revised instead of the law being abolished, while other reform bills — including the press law, the law on past wrongdoings and the private school law — would be passed. The deal collapsed amid resistance from hard-line advocates of repeal inside the Uri Party, including Yoo.
The former chairman has previously given his own account of the episode. "In late December 2004, I met Park Geun-hye, then leader of the Grand National Party, and we agreed to revise the National Security Law and to amend the press law, the law on past wrongdoings and the private school law along the lines of the governing party's proposal. But we ran into resistance from advocates of abolishing the National Security Law within the Uri Party, including then-lawmaker Yoo Si-min, and in the end the deal between the two party leaders collapsed," he wrote on his Facebook page on Jan. 3, 2020.
That history has drawn fresh attention to Lee's remarks as it intersects with the current debate over prosecution reform. At a news conference on the 18th, Lee said the basic goal of prosecution reform is to separate investigation from indictment, and that the institutional overhaul now under way goes further than his original plan. The message was a request that doubts about his supposedly rolling back prosecution reform be set aside.
Yoo has steadily criticized Lee in blunt terms, describing him as "a pebble in the shoe" and invoking "monarchy and aristocracy." His accusation after the news conference that the president had "deceived the public" is seen as having reached a point the presidential office could no longer ignore, because it went beyond Lee's policy judgment to question the sincerity of his explanation to the public.
The presidential office, which had made little response to Yoo's repeated sharp criticism, reacted immediately this time. In a notice to the media, it said it regretted "the distortion of the president's commitment to prosecution reform in ways that are contrary to the facts," and that it was "verifying the facts regarding the continuation of baseless, accusatory claims." Reports even emerged that the office was considering legal action against Rhee, but it officially drew a line, saying "nothing has been decided on whether to take legal action."
That the president, while traveling abroad, revived the 22-year-old dispute over the National Security Law just a day after the office took that position is read as a warning that prosecution reform, too, can fail if it leads only with ideological purity. "They make excessive claims in order to show off their own purity," Lee said. "Being pure may look impressive, but it is not easy to produce good results in actually creating the desirable situation we want."
"It would be nice to clear everything away at once, loudly and dramatically, but that is not easy," he said. "As far as possible, it is better to minimize resistance, minimize pushback and produce effective, practical, substantive results." The remarks are read as reaffirming a governing approach that prioritizes actual results over hard-line slogans.
Separately, Lee again dismissed talk in some quarters of a constitutional amendment allowing a second term. "There will never be a case of going past June 2, 2030, so those who are worried about that need not worry," he said.
