[WORD_ON_THE_WEB] ‘I’m truly worried about this government’s future’

Kim Seong-hoi, former presidential secretary for religious and multicultural affairs, resigned on Friday amid controversy over his past remarks on homosexuality.

Kim uploaded a Facebook post in 2019, claiming that he “didn’t condone homosexual relationships” and thought that homosexuality was a “symptom of a mental disease.”

He also wrote on the issue surrounding the Korea-Japan agreement on the compensation for Japanese wartime sex slaves that year, using the phrasing “money for sex” when addressing the victims’ claims for compensation.

Kim apologized, saying that his wording was too harsh when addressing the so-called comfort women. That backfired when he also appeared to try to justify his comments by saying that during the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910), “half the female population were objects of sexual pleasure for the noblemen, who were their masters at any time.”

He also rallied against his critics, claiming he was being targeted by the “586 generation — which refers to those who were born in the 1960s, protested against dictatorship in the 1980s and are now in their 50s — and “pro-North liberals.”

#absurd_logic

“It’s a disease to think that homosexuality is a disease.”

“Asserting homosexuality is a disease? Thoughts like those are the baseline of discrimination. I’m truly worried about this government’s future, with so many anti-intellectualists around the president.”

#line_that_can’t_be_crossed

“How could he say something so vile to the victims? His conception of the world is crooked.”

“I wonder how he lives on with such a deformed sense of nationality.”

#unfit_for_the_job

“I think he’s the least qualified person for the job imaginable”

BY LEE SI-YEOUNG, YOO JI-WOO [yoo.jiwoo@joongang.co.kr]