South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol has suspended meetings with the press outside his office since Monday after a journalist got into an argument with one of his advisors over the presidency’s decision to exclude his media outlet from an international trip for publishing «fake news».
Yoon said Friday that it was «inevitable» that his office would prevent journalists from the MBC television network from going on the trip with him because of their «malicious behavior» after the network published a video in September of Yoon leaving an event in New York in which he used foul-mouthed words to refer to the approval of measures by the National Assembly, an issue that sparked controversy in the country.
The South Korean presidency explained that the video was subtitled in such a way that Yoon appears to refer to the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden, when in fact he was referring to the South Korean Parliament, for which Seoul criticized the «biased and distorted coverage» of the aforementioned channel.
Following Yoon’s remarks on Friday, an MBC reporter questioned him as he was leaving to explain «what MBC did that was malicious,» which triggered an argument with an aide to the president who criticized him for being rude to the president, according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency.
As a result, the presidency has stressed that the rounds of questions upon his arrival at his office are suspended as of this Monday. «We have decided that they can no longer be held without fundamental measures to prevent a repeat of the recent unpleasant incident.» «These sessions were conceived for open communication with the population,» he has explained.
«We will consider resuming them if measures are prepared that adequately serve this purpose,» said Yoon’s office, who had made these meetings with the press one of his personal trademarks during his six months in office, despite the fact that these meetings with journalists have sometimes been blamed for the president’s declining popularity ratings.
