Jung Min-ho has worked as a staff writer at The Korea Times since 2012, mostly covering social and political issues. He currently belongs to the Politics & City Desk where he covers topics such as health, labor and human rights. Prior to joining the team, he was responsible for covering North Korea and sports. His article about a biosecurity breach of Middle East respiratory syndrome won him an award from the Korea Science Journalists Association in 2016. He is also the co-author of the book, "Medical Pioneers of Korea" (2019). He served as the head of the international relations committee at the Journalists Association of Korea from 2021 to 2023.
Lee's performance draws mixed responses
By Jung Min-ho
Lee Jung-hee UPP presidential contender
By Jung Min-ho
Lee Jung-hee’s biting criticism of Park Geun-hye during Tuesday’s televised debate instantly drew mixed reactions, making her name the hottest search of the night on the nation’s No. 1 search engine Naver.
While many right-wing media companies criticized the Unified Progressive Party candidate for “lowering the debate’s quality,” a plethora of others supported Lee, saying that her acute criticism “exposed Park’s inept communication skills and her moral deformity.”
“Lee completely ruined what was supposed to be an opportunity for the voters to measure and compare the candidates’ personality, ability and policies,” said Park Sun-kyu a spokesman of the ruling Saenuri Party’s election camp,. “She should have respected the other participants knowing that the public was watching the debate. But Lee was blatantly hostile and the other two were unable to fully show what they had prepared because of her.”
The moderator failed to keep the situation under control. Most importantly, Lee didn’t give satisfactory responses to her own question about a controversial remark she made in support of North Korea’s planned rocket launch, instead making personal attacks on Park, the spokesman said.
On the other hand, liberal political commentator Chin Jung-kwon complimented the performance on Twitter saying, “She took best advantage of the debate rules out of the three, even though her too-aggressive attitude was a negative factor.”
Lee’s attacks didn’t hurt Moon Jae-in because they were concentrated on Park. However, Democratic United Party (DUP) spokesman Park Yong-jin expressed regret over the minor liberal candidate’s over-aggressiveness, saying “it overshadowed Moon’s presence and policy visions.”
Nevertheless, some of Lee’s criticism based on hard facts is expected to highlight ethical issues because the UPP contender highlighted the fact that Park received 600 million won ($554,000) from former president Chun Doo-hwan in 1979, a fact to which the Saenuri Party candidate has admitted.
With the election only two weeks away, experts say it may hurt Park’s popularity at a crucial point.
A day after the debate, the DUP requested Park to clarify the money’s whereabouts, saying she claimed to only have 2.18 million won. Taking into account inflation from 1979, the money is estimated to be worth about 30 billion won now.
“It can be speculated that Park didn’t report the money because it was dirty money,” a DUP official said Wednesday. “We urge Park to return the money to society and make an apology to the public.”
With her less-than 1 percent support rate, Lee’s chance to win the election remain at almost zero in spite of her strong performance. But it gave the two candidates a heads-up ahead of two more television debates before the Dec. 19 election.