국민의힘 미디어특위 공식 성명 및 보도자료입니다.
1. 워싱턴포스트 2월 14일자 이재명 대표 인터뷰 기사 제목은 “한국의 유력 차기 지도자는 중국‧북한과의 관계 개선을 원한다.(South Korea’s likely next leader wants warmer ties with China, North Korea)”임.
2. 이재명 대표가 한국의 대통령이 되면 트럼프 행정부와 갈등을 초래할 수 있다고 명시함.
→ Lee Jae-myung would also temper South Korea’s hawkish approach toward China — potentially putting him at odds with the Trump administration — if he becomes the country’s president and returns a progressive government to Seoul. (이재명이 한국의 대통령이 되어 진보 정부가 다시 들어서게 되면 중국에 대한 한국의 강경한 접근 방식을 완화할 수 있으며, 이는 트럼프 행정부와 갈등을 초래할 수 있다.)
3. 이재명 대표의 최근 친일 행보는 중도층 표심을 얻기 위한 전략이라고 의심하고 있음.
→ Lee’s recent rhetorical shift also reflects his need to appeal to moderate swing voters in a snap election, analysts say. (최근 그의 발언 변화는 조기 대선을 앞두고 중도층 표심을 얻기 위한 전략이라는 분석이 나온다)
4. (이재명 때문에) 한일 관계가 다시 긴장관계로 돌아간다면, 워싱턴 정책 당국자들에게 우려를 불러일으킬 것이라고 전망함.
→ A return to tense Tokyo-Seoul relations would concern policy officials in Washington, who want the neighbors to cooperate against a shared threat: Beijing. (도쿄와 서울의 긴장이 다시 고조될 경우, 중국 견제를 위해 한일 협력을 원했던 워싱턴의 정책 결정자들이 우려할 수 있다.)
5. 대북 송금 의혹 등 이재명 대표의 사법 리스크를 언급하며 대선출마 여부도 불확실하다고 함.
→ Despite being the front-runner for the presidency, according to polls, Lee may not even be able to run. He faces several legal hurdles, from allegations of illegally directing funds to North Korea to a corruption scandal involving a development project in Seongnam, (그러나 이재명은 대북 송금 의혹, 성남 대장동 개발 비리 사건, 공직선거법 위반 혐의 등으로 법적 문제를 안고 있어 대선 출마가 불확실하다.)
6. 민주당 보도자료만 보면 마치 워싱턴포스트가 이재명 대표를 우호적으로 평가한 것처럼 착각할 수 있으나, 기사 원문을 보면 인터뷰를 진행한 미셸 예희 리 서울/도쿄 지국장이 균형감각을 잃지 않으면서도 ‘이재명 대표는 친중‧친북인사’라고 도장을 콱! 박은 것을 확인할 수 있음.
2025. 2. 16
국민의힘 <진짜뉴스 발굴단>
※ 별첨 : 워싱턴포스트 기사 원문
South Korea’s likely next leader wants warmer ties with China, North Korea
Lee Jae-myung says he would support President Donald Trump’s efforts to restart talks with North Korea — and even consider nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Yesterday at 1:00 a.m. EST
Lee Jae-myung, the leader of the main opposition Democratic Party in South Korea, is the heavy favorite to become the country’s next president. (Jun Michael Park for The Washington Post)
By Michelle Ye Hee Lee
SEOUL — South Korea’s likely next leader would support President Donald Trump’s efforts to restart dialogue with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un — and would even consider nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize if there was a significant breakthrough, signaling a sharp change from Seoul’s current hard-line approach toward Pyongyang.
Lee Jae-myung would also temper South Korea’s hawkish approach toward China — potentially putting him at odds with the Trump administration — if he becomes the country’s president and returns a progressive government to Seoul.
“It’s an issue of managing a balance,” Lee said in an interview with The Washington Post on Thursday. “The problem is that South Korea is on the front lines” of a challenging geopolitical landscape in the Asia-Pacific region.
That means South Korea can’t afford to alienate China, he said. However, he stressed that it remained important for Seoul to strengthen its security alliance with the United States and cooperate with both Washington and Tokyo.
“The United States does not consistently pursue a solely antagonistic or solely cooperative stance toward China,” he said, adding that Seoul must also adapt its approach to Beijing, its largest trading partner.
Lee, 61, is the leader of the main opposition Democratic Party and the heavy favorite to become South Korea’s next president if the Constitutional Court removes Yoon Suk Yeol from office over his move to impose martial law at the end of last year. The court is reviewing the National Assembly’s decision to impeach Yoon and could rule within a few weeks. If Yoon is removed, a new presidential election will have to be held within 60 days.
While Lee has declined to outright say that he is seeking the presidency — which he lost to Yoon by a the narrowest of margins in 2022 — he has recently moderated his policy positions and is clearly positioning himself to deal with an unpredictable Trump, saying he will find ways to work with the American president, no matter what.
Lee said he welcomed Trump’s desire to restart dialogue with North Korea, after Trump’s first-term meetings with Kim led nowhere but were remarkable in that they happened at all.
If Trump could bring about a significant breakthrough in the eight-decade-long hostilities on the Korean Peninsula, Lee said his Democratic Party might be moved to nominate the American president for one of the world’s highest awards.
“I hope there will be a situation within this year under which we as a party officially nominate Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize,” he said. “If there is significant progress on the nuclear and missile issues on the Korean Peninsula, it would be beneficial for everyone.”
That could be music to Trump’s ears: When Japan’s prime minister at the time, Shinzo Abe, nominated him for the same award in 2019, he called it “most beautiful.”
But Lee is also conscious that Trump could hit South Korea with tariffs — again — although he said Trump couldn’t wage a trade war indefinitely.
A tariff war is “not a desirable or good situation from the South Korean point of view, but what are we supposed to do?” Lee said. “It’s fine and all to pressure foreign companies by hiking tariffs, but it would probably be hard to keep it up when the prices in the United States start to rise.”
A victory for Lee would mark a change from Yoon, a conservative who strengthened ties with Washington and Tokyo and aligned more closely with the United States in its strategic competition with China.
South Korea’s progressive governments have supported the U.S.-South Korean alliance but have not bent over backward for it, either — preferring to hedge between Washington, which it depends on for its security, and Beijing, which is important for South Korea’s economy and for constraining North Korea.
Lee said strengthening the trilateral relationship between the United States, South Korea and Japan was the right thing to do. Washington doesn’t need to “excessively” or “unnecessarily” worry about the strength of the alliance under a South Korean Democratic administration, he said.
“If the Democratic Party tries to damage the South Korea-U.S. relationship … what would we gain from that? We would lose more from the deterioration of relations with the United States” than it would gain from only taking China’s side, he said.
Lee is taking a markedly more nuanced foreign policy stance than in the past.
In 2023, Lee led a 24-day hunger strike to oppose Yoon’s softer stance toward Japan, which occupied the Korean Peninsula, often brutally, from 1910 to 1945. He also sharply criticized U.S.-South Korea-Japan joint military exercises that began under Yoon.
Lee’s recent rhetorical shift also reflects his need to appeal to moderate swing voters in a snap election, analysts say. The South Korean public — and particularly younger swing voters — has become more critical of China and North Korea and warmed toward Japan since the last progressive leader left office in 2022, said Park Sung-min, a veteran political analyst.
While acknowledging that South Korea and Japan need to cooperate as neighboring democracies, Lee said South Koreans can’t back down from unresolved historical grievances, including a territorial dispute and the compensation of laborers forced to work for Japanese companies during colonization.
“I think this is a problem that Japan should resolve like Germany did. … Germany has seriously reflected, and seriously works hard to make sure history doesn’t repeat, and shows their efforts to the world,” Lee said. But Japan had not properly admitted its colonial-era wrongdoings, he said.
Japan believes historical issues were resolved when the two nations normalized relations in 1965 and Japan paid $500 million to South Korea to settle colonial-era claims “completely and finally.”
A return to tense Tokyo-Seoul relations would concern policy officials in Washington, who want the neighbors to cooperate against a shared threat: Beijing.
Despite being the front-runner for the presidency, according to polls, Lee may not even be able to run. He faces several legal hurdles, from allegations of illegally directing funds to North Korea to a corruption scandal involving a development project in Seongnam, where he served as mayor. He has denied the allegations and called the investigations politically motivated.
Lee has appealed his November conviction for an election law violation. If the Supreme Court upholds Lee’s guilty verdict before a special election is called, he would be disqualified from running.
It’s par for the course for the perennial underdog. Lee grew up in poverty, working in sweatshops as a teen to help support his family, clocking in and out instead of attending middle school. An accident at a glove factory left one arm permanently deformed.
He eventually became a labor and human rights lawyer. After serving as Seongnam mayor, he became the governor of Gyeonggi province, just outside Seoul. These varied life experiences helped him “understand the dark sides and other aspects of the world,” he said, and gave him empathy for his constituents.
“It’s not always easy for politicians to feel how much impact a policy has,” Lee said. “But I have experienced it myself.”
He names former U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt as a role model for his pro-labor New Deal policies, as well as Kim Gu, a famous independence activist during the Japanese occupation.
Last year, Lee survived an assassination attempt after a man stabbed him in the neck during an event. “I collapsed and looked at the blue sky and thought, ‘Oh, that sky will soon disappear from my sight. This must be death,’” Lee said. “Now, the time I have left feels like a bonus. It made me a freer person, less worried about the preciousness of my life.”
That experience was on his mind on the night of Dec. 3, after Yoon declared martial law. Lee rushed to the National Assembly, where soldiers had gathered to prevent — unsuccessfully, it turned out — lawmakers from voting to reverse Yoon’s decree.
As his wife drove him there, Lee started a live stream on his YouTube channel, asking the public to join him.
“We need you to protect this country,” Lee said in the video, which has been viewed nearly 3 million times.
His video helped attract crowds of protesters to slow down the soldiers. He kept streaming as he scaled the wall to enter and cast his vote.
“I was braced for martial law soldiers surrounding me. I wanted to show them arresting me,” Lee said. “But I didn’t fear them killing me.”
끝.