Still the same old Lee Jae Myung
Park Jung-won
President Lee Jae Myung’s recent press conference Sept. 18 was a rare opportunity to show whether he had his finger on the pulse of Korean society. Housing costs put the squeeze on daily life, stock-market turmoil has hit individual investors and ministerial nominees have become embroiled in ethical controversies. Many expected him to acknowledge the problems and offer solutions, but what they saw was not a new Lee. It was the Lee they already knew.
Asked about his past remarks on jeonse, Korea’s lump-sum deposit rental system, Lee remembered saying jeonse “would disappear,” not that it “should disappear.” He challenged the reporter to show when he had ever said otherwise. It was remarkable — while ordinary Koreans are struggling with jeonse deposits and monthly rents, the president focused on parsing his earlier wording. The real question was what he would do about housing insecurity.
The scene was not unfamiliar. After a controversial Criminal Procedure Act revision eliminated prosecutors’ supplementary investigative authority, Lee said he had not read the revised provisions. When high-risk, single-stock leveraged products produced losses for individual investors, he distanced himself by saying he had been briefed but did not know the details. However, when presidential command works in his favor, Lee has televised Cabinet meetings, rebuked ministers and drilled into administrative details. It is a remarkably convenient way to govern.
When attention to detail suits his needs, Lee is the hands-on president. When responsibility beckons, he has not read something or does not know the details. When political interests are at stake, principles become flexible. When accountability is in question, what he was told and which words he used suddenly matter. This might be dismissed as a political tactic if he only used it once or twice. But when the same pattern keeps repeating, it becomes a matter of character.
Lee’s credibility problem is not something new. For instance, as the opposition leader, he pledged to end lawmakers’ immunity from arrest, only to effectively urge lawmakers from his own party to reject a motion consenting to his arrest. As words and actions diverge, people start wondering what lies behind his statements.
At the press conference, Lee stated unequivocally that he had “no intention whatsoever” of seeking another term. That should have ended the matter, so why do people still parse his words? Why wonder whether another explanation or political calculation will follow? If a president has depleted trust in his own words, he cannot blame the public for the consequences.
The press conference was a chance to break this cycle. If the policies were wrong, he could have acknowledged it and changed them. Troubled nominations could have been withdrawn. His legal problems could have been left to law and procedure, with a promise that any trials awaiting him after office would be faced like any other citizen.
Instead, Lee again appeared intent on keeping his options open. But more calculation does not always create more exits. Sometimes it closes them. A politician may think he is preserving escape routes, but when public trust disappears, those routes can disappear with it. The press conference may have given Lee a chance to provide excuses but it failed to show that he had changed.
However, an exit for the public is far more urgent than the president’s political one. Even in a difficult property market, Lee found a way to sell his apartment — effectively extending private credit to the buyers at a time when ordinary homebuyers face tight lending restrictions. He found an exit from his own property problem, but countless Koreans are looking for one in the form of affordable housing and living costs.
Ruling party politicians often seem to inhabit another world. Pro-Lee and anti-Lee factions within his party fight while Lee urges them not to fight “among ourselves.” What about everyone else? For workers seeking housing, couples worried about rent or investors facing losses, ruling party factional warfare is not a fight “among ourselves.” Their homes, their bills and their family’s futures are more urgent.
Why, then, must ordinary Koreans devote so much attention to Lee’s next move? Will he seek another term? What constitutional changes will he pursue? What happens to his legal issues after he leaves office? Who in the ruling party will stand by him? What calculation might lie behind his next statement? Is this normal?
A president should worry about the people’s future. Instead, citizens find themselves worrying about him and what he might do next. What choice he might make to deal with his political and legal problems, and what costs that choice might impose on the country? If this is Korean democracy in 2026, something has gone badly wrong. Koreans did not fight for democracy to revolve around one politician’s predicament. The president is also a citizen. He serves his term and then leaves. Every presidency ends. Park Geun-hye left office, Yoon Suk Yeol left office and Lee will eventually leave office, too. Those at the center of power sometimes forget this simple fact.
Korean democracy may look deeply troubled today. But Lee should not underestimate Korea’s institutions or the memory of its people. Today’s words do not vanish tomorrow, nor do today’s actions disappear from the record. Political calculation may overcome an immediate difficulty. It cannot erase public memory, nor can another maneuver easily restore exhausted trust. Lee should not take Korea lightly.
The real concern is not Lee’s political end. That is his concern. The problem is what happens in the meantime. Rent does not wait. Inflation does not wait. Lost money and lost opportunities do not return when a president’s political crisis ends. Lee the politician can worry about his own future. The president of the Republic of Korea should be worrying about the future of the Korean people. How much longer must Korea endure this inversion of the basic order of democratic responsibility?
Park Jung-won (park_jungwon@hotmail.com), Ph.D. in law from the London School of Economics (LSE), is a professor of international law at Dankook University.