Foreign Ministry Sues MBC for Coverage of President Yoon’s “Foul Language”

A scene from an MBC report of President Yoon Suk-yeol making the controversial comment. / Captured on MBC TV

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs filed a claim for corrections against MBC, which first reported President Yoon Suk-yeol’s comment including foul language.

The Seoul Western District Court announced on January 15 that the foreign ministry filed a suit against MBC on December 19. The plaintiff was Minister of Foreign Affairs Park Jin and the defendant was MBC President Park Sung-jae. President Yoon, who made the controversial comment, did not participate in the lawsuit. The complaint was delivered to MBC on January 2.

Attorney Choi Tae-hyeong (58, Class 22 of the Judicial Research and Training Institute) was stated as the plaintiff’s litigation representative. Choi was on the disciplinary committee in the Ministry of Justice when Choo Mi-ae formerly served as minister. He was absent when Minister Choo convened the disciplinary committee to discuss disciplinary measures against the prosecutor general at the time, Yoon Suk-yeol. This led to speculation in the legal circle that Choi did not attend the meeting because he did not agree to disciplinary action against Yoon.

The latest lawsuit can be traced all the way to last September. At the time, President Yoon Suk-yeol was in New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly, and MBC quoted the controversial words of the president as, “It would be so humiliating for Biden if these idiots don’t pass it in parliament.” The Office of the President refuted that the president said, “if they blow it (pronounced “nallimyeon” in Korean)” and not “Biden.”

The foreign ministry and MBC failed to narrow their differences despite the intervention of the Press Arbitration Commission at the end of last year. The foreign ministry argued that the coverage, which was different from fact, had a negative impact on the nation’s diplomacy, while MBC claimed, “We cannot make a correction since it was not a false report, and we also fully conveyed the argument made by the Office of the President.”

A foreign ministry representative spoke on the claim for corrections and argued, “The MBC coverage had an adverse effect on the credibility of our diplomacy inside and outside the nation.” He further said, “We filed the lawsuit to correct the facts and to restore credibility in our foreign relations.”

However, since the foreign minister filed the suit instead of the president, the case could trigger a debate on the eligibility of the plaintiff. After all, Minister Park Jin was not the person mentioned in the press report. The foreign ministry explained, “As a ministry overseeing our nation’s relations with the United States, we are qualified as a party involved in the litigation since we are the greatest victim of the coverage in question.”

This was not the first time that the government filed a lawsuit against the press. In 2008, under the Lee Myung-bak government, Minister of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Chung Woon-chun sued the producers of PD Notebook, a show on MBC that reported the dangers of mad cow disease, claiming that they tarnished his reputation with distorted and false reports. The five producers of PD Notebook charged with libel were acquitted by the Supreme Court in 2011.