President Yoon Suk-yeol of South Korea, who you might remember from my coverage of his lolcow wife, has run into a bit of a diplomatic scandal.
This ajussi thinks he has magical powers lmao.
Failures leading up to...
He went on a world tour that should have been a welcome escape from domestic politics given his low approval rating. But apparently his psychic powers aren't as good as he thinks. He failed to forsee everything going wrong that possibly could. First he went to London but missed Queen Elizabeth's funeral, blaming traffic for being late. Then it was on to the UN General Assembly, a place where all world leaders love to do a photo op and look dignified. He announced that he was going to have summit meetings with the Japanese PM and President Biden to b-word about Korea's grievances.
Signing the book of condolences after he failed to attend the funeral.
The Koreans want compensation for s*x slaves taken by the Japanese during WW2. The Japanese argue that they already paid massive amounts of reparations in exchange for the Koreans dropping all claims against them in 1965. Given that Korea never suffered the kind of devastation that China and the Philippines did, it really was a relatively sweet deal tbqh. So this is not a conversation that the Japanese wanted to have. They came out publicly saying that they had been talking about a possible summit but hadn't agreed to anything yet. In the end, Yoon managed to get a brief 30 minute meeting with the Japanese PM and no indication that the Korean demands are being taken seriously.
Yoon wanted to meet Biden to whine about how the American "Inflation Reduction Act" will subsidize American automakers and damage imports of cheap piece of shit Korean cars. Of course Koreans only care about free trade when it goes one way. This is especially rich considering that the Koreans have for decades been finding whatever underhanded methods possible to block imports of luxury cars from the USA. Yoon managed to spend an entire 48 seconds speaking to Biden, once again ending up achieving nothing.
Insane people demonstrate against beef actually being affordable enough for them to eat.
...scandal
Just as he was leaving the meeting with Biden, he was caught on camera saying something like "Itβd be humiliating for Biden if those jackasses/idiots/frickers in the legislature donβt pass it." Presumably he was talking about the US Congress not passing a bill that Biden supports. This caused a lot of embarrassment because while Koreans might like to irrationally chimp out at America at home from time to time, they know better than to have their leader insulting the US government at a diplomatic function.
Actual footage of the average Korean's reaction to this news.
Yoon went into damage control mode and came up with an explanation. He actually hadn't said "Biden", he'd said a word in Korean that sounds similar. He wasn't talking about the US legislature, he was talking about the Korean legislature. Of course that just means that he's offending the Korean legislature too now and nobody believes him anyway. As some random Korean Youtube commenter said, "Mistakes can be forgiven but lies cannot."
Unfortunately I cannot find anyone who will actually spell out what the profanity was. The best I can find is "κ΅ν μ΄ XXλ€μ΄ μΉμΈ μ ν΄μ£Όλ©΄ λ°μ΄λ μ΄ μͺ½νλ €μ μ΄λ‘νλ" with the word in question censored and the audio is way too hard for me to make out even after it's been cleaned up.
Sources
I've covered everything worth saying, but if you want to look into this more, we have:
Leftoid editorial - When you've got me agreeing with Hankyoreh about foreign policy you know you've done something wrong.
Centroid editorial - Basically saying the same things.
Rightoid reporting - They're not any happier about it.
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That 4 billion dollar reparations Japan gave to Korea (under the supervision of USA) was sent into a corrupt military dictatorship that forgot to actually payout victims. Worst Korea asking for reparations every year like as if their entire industry wasn't built on Japanese and American interest free loans is rich.
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Not Japan's problem
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The same thing happened when the US was sending money to compensate them for their soldiers going to Vietnam. The government just kept it and didn't share it with the veterans. On the other hand, at least they were relatively responsible when spending the money. It did go into building up industry, unlike most underdeveloped countries in the 1960s-1970s where corrupt governments just siphoned off everything into Swiss bank accounts.
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I wonder who owned POSCO
Every member of the Korean elite in 1965 had this exact same background. SK was lucky that their dictator wasn't a complete r-slur but it took a couple decades for the benefits to really pay off. Any other person and Koreans would still be living in mud huts as a backwater Chinese province.
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