South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol has found himself at the center of a scandal in his country that escalated after he denied making offensive remarks about the United States, his main security ally.

A television camera caught Yoon Suk-yeol privately making disparaging remarks about US congressmen after a meeting Wednesday with US President Joe Biden at the Global Fund (to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria) in New York.

“How can you not laugh at Biden if these bastards don’t vote it through Congress?” Yoon appears to have said in this recording, aired by South Korea’s MBC, of ​​the US president’s proposal to increase aid to the Global Fund. which requires congressional approval, France Presse reports.

Although the recording was unclear, many believed Yoon was talking about the US Congress and US President Joe Biden, Yonhap also reported.

Official explanations

Yoon’s office later denied the claim, explaining that the president actually meant he would be embarrassed if South Korea’s opposition-controlled National Assembly rejected the $100 million it had promised to contribute to the Global Fund.

Seoul’s presidential spokeswoman Kim Eun-hye said the president “had no reason to talk about the United States or say the word ‘Biden’.” During a news conference in New York on Thursday, Kim Jong-un said that Yun Suk-yeol did not mention “Biden” but actually said a similar-sounding Korean word, and that he was referring to South Korean lawmakers, not Americans.

On Thursday in South Korea, the most popular hashtag on Twitter was “fools”.

The video, posted on YouTube, has been viewed more than 5 million times in less than a day, and the word “shit” became the most trending hashtag on Twitter in South Korea on Thursday.

Many netizens expressed doubt about how the government responded. “It is absolutely disgraceful and disturbing for our children that the presidency has found such an excuse,” wrote one YouTube user, while another wrote: “I have listened ten times. Said +Biden+ for sure.”

The TV channel that first reported the words should be held accountable because it “undermined the irreplaceable alliance between the US and South Korea,” a ruling party lawmaker said.

But the main opposition party, the Democratic Party (PD), reacted strongly.

“This is a shame for the people who must have felt deeply humiliated and their dignity was violated,” Lee Jae-meng, president of the DP, said during a meeting of the party’s Supreme Council on Friday. “The thought of blaming 169 PD lawmakers for a diplomatic disaster is so vulgar that I can’t lift my face,” Lee was quoted as saying by Yonhap.

Yoon’s official refusal is the same as telling South Koreans that “they are hard of hearing,” PD lawmaker Chung Jae-sun also thanked.

DP asked Yoon to apologize and replace all presidential advisers involved in the incident. He also demanded an emergency meeting of parliamentary committees.

Washington has about 27,000 troops stationed in South Korea to counter the threat posed by a nuclear-armed North Korea.

Yun, a former prosecutor, faced a record low of just 28 percent in the latest poll released Friday. (Source: Agerpres)