“Are Meokbang YouTubers Porn Stars?” Lee Jun-seok Asks Ruling PPP, which Criticized the “Poverty Porn” Comment

First lady Kim Keon-hee visits the home of a child suffering from a congenital heart disease and examines his health in Phnom Penh, Cambodia on November 12 (local time). Courtesy of the Office of the President

Lee Jun-seok, former leader of the People Power Party (PPP) asked the party lawmakers who raised an issue with the term “poverty porn” to “be reasonable,” on November 16.

On Wednesday, Lee wrote on social media and said, “Those focusing on the word ‘porn’ in the term ‘poverty porn’ only prove that they have never thought about this old debate.” He pointed out how people overseas referred to Korean meokbang or eating shows as Korean food porn and asked, “Does that mean the meokbang YouTubers are porn stars?”

Lee criticized the People Power Party lawmakers who attacked the opposition party for describing first lady Kim Keon-hee’s tour in Southeast Asia as poverty porn. On Wednesday, Jang Dong-hyeok, the PPP spokesperson on the floor, and PPP lawmaker Tae Yong-ho, the party secretary in the parliamentary Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee, submitted a proposal for disciplinary measures to the special ethics committee in the National Assembly after Jang Kyung-tae, a member of the Democratic Party of Korea’s Supreme Council criticized the first lady’s trip as a “poverty porn photo shoot.” In a meeting to discuss the party’s strategies on the floor, PPP floor leader Joo Ho-young also said, “We ask lawmaker Jang Kyung-tae to formally apologize to the Democratic Party and to all women in the Republic of Korea.”

Lee’s post seemed to aim at such responses in the PPP and stated, “We lost the traditional Chinese idiom yangtougourou (羊頭狗肉, literally meaning to hang a sheep’s head, while selling dog meat / crying wine and selling vinegar) some time ago, and now we are losing the term poverty porn, which still needs to be fiercely debated and deliberated.”

He continued and argued, “Poverty porn is an outdated culture that we need to point out, just as much as the issue of the Solidarity Against Disability Discrimination. It is a matter that we must break away from someday just by the fact that the broad and diverse demand for social welfare is being monopolized by organizations promoting poverty porn with a few broadcasting stations.”