South Korea’s Foreign Minister Cho Hyun said on Wednesday that a high-level Israeli official said it accepted Seoul’s explanation of President Lee Jae Myung’s social media remarks on the Holocaust and that the situation had been resolved.
Lee sparked a diplomatic row and domestic criticism after comparing Israeli military actions against Palestinians to the Holocaust in a post on X, comments that Israel strongly rejected.
On April 10, President Lee shared a video on X by a user named Jvnior, which appeared to show Israeli soldiers pushing a body off a roof.
The original video was captioned, “LIVE FOOTAGE: IDF soldiers tortured a Palestinian kid and threw him off a roof.” Lee commented, “We need to verify whether this is true, and if it is, what actions were taken.”
He then compared such “wartime killings” to “the Holocaust of the Jews” and to the “comfort women” issue, referring to Korean women who were forced into sexual slavery during World War II.
However, the footage shared by Jvnior was not live, as claimed, and actually dated back to September 2024. The body shown in the video was not that of a child, but rather an adult terrorist who had been killed in an active firefight by the Duvdevan commando unit in the West Bank. Although the terrorist was already deceased at the time the body was thrown from the roof, the IDF condemned the incident and launched an investigation.
In response to Lee’s tweet, Israel’s Foreign Ministry stated, “The trivialization of the massacre of Jews on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel [is] unacceptable and warrant[s] strong condemnation.” The ministry further criticized President Lee, saying, “President Lee Jae Myung, for some strange reason, chose to dig up a story from 2024 and to cite a fake account that falsely presented it as a current event,” They noted that the Jvnior account is notorious for spreading anti-Israeli disinformation.
The ministry also pointed out, “We have not heard a single word from the president about the terrorists who were at the center of this event, nor have we heard any acknowledgment from him regarding the recent Iranian and Hezbollah terror attacks against Israeli citizens.”
Lee later responded, admitting that the video was indeed taken in September 2024 and confirmed that Israel had conducted investigations and taken appropriate actions concerning the incident.
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