(Seoul) South Korea’s president has denied making insulting remarks about the United States, his main security ally, saying through his office that they were mistranslated, which sparked a new wave of disbelief on Friday.
Posted at 8:07
A television camera caught Yoon Suk-yeol making disparaging remarks about US lawmakers after meeting with US President Joe Biden at the Global Fund in New York on Wednesday.
“How could Biden not lose face if these motherfuckers don’t get (it) through Congress? “, appears to say Mr. Yoon on this recording broadcast by the South Korean channel MBC, about Mr. Biden’s proposal to increase his financial assistance to the Global Fund, which requires the approval of Congress.
Presidential spokeswoman Kim Eun-hye, however, claimed that the South Korean president “had no reason to talk about the United States or say the word ‘Biden'”.
During a press briefing on Thursday in New York, Mme Kim argued that Yoon Suk-yeol did not mention “Biden,” but actually said a similar-sounding Korean word, and was referring to South Korean, not American, lawmakers.
Posted on YouTube, the video has been viewed more than five million times in less than a day, and the word “fuckers” used by Mr. Yoon was Thursday the most popular hashtag on Twitter in South Korea.
A ruling party parliamentarian said the television channel, which was the first to report the remarks, should be prosecuted for having “damaged the irreplaceable alliance between the United States and South Korea”.
Online, however, many expressed doubts about the government’s response.
“It is absolutely shameful and disturbing for our children that (the) presidency has found such an excuse,” wrote one user on YouTube, when another posted: “I have listened to it ten times. It’s “Biden”, that’s for sure. »
Mr. Yoon’s official denial is tantamount to telling South Koreans that they are “deaf”, opposition Democratic Party parliamentarian Chun Jae-soon said on Friday.
Washington has about 27,000 troops stationed in the country to deal with the threat posed by nuclear-armed North Korea.
Mr. Yoon, a former prosecutor, is struggling with an approval rating at the lowest, at 28% according to a latest poll published on Friday.