Lee Jae-myung Criticizes Yoon Hee-sook on Property-Proportional Fine System, Tells Her to "First Improve Korean Reading Comprehension"

Gyeonggi Province Governor Lee Jae-myung (left) and People Power Party lawmaker Yoon Hee-sook (right) engaged in a heated debate over the property-proportional fine system.
[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Choyoung] Lee Jae-myung, Governor of Gyeonggi Province, on the 25th, responded to People Power Party lawmaker Yoon Hee-sook's fierce criticism calling his proposed 'property-proportional fine system' a "lie" by saying, "People Power Party should teach their members some Korean reading comprehension."

Through his Facebook on the same day, Governor Lee said, "Competition and criticism among political forces are essential elements of representative democracy, but fake news or distorted criticism for the purpose of propaganda and agitation are harmful to democracy."

He explained, "I proposed the property-proportional fine system," adding, "The property-proportional fine system means imposing fines differentially according to economic power such as income and property for the substantive fairness and effectiveness of penalties, and Western advanced countries adopted it long ago."

He then pointed out, "I can understand that lawmaker Yoon Hee-sook argues that 'the fine proportionality standard should be income, not property,' but she criticized me by saying 'he claimed that fines should be proportional only to property, and lied that Finland uses property standards when it actually uses income standards' based on my writing."

Governor Lee rebutted, "The core concept of the property-proportional fine system is proportionality of fines to economic power such as income and property, and I never said that the proportional fine system should be 'only proportional to property.' On the contrary, I indirectly indicated that it should be proportional to both income and property."

He continued, "I believe lawmaker Yoon is not malicious enough to distort and criticize despite knowing the meaning of the property-proportional fine system and the content of my writing," adding, "It is clear that she did not properly understand the meaning of the property-proportional fine system and the content of the writing, so I recommend that she improve her Korean reading comprehension before criticizing."

Earlier, lawmaker Yoon pointed out regarding Governor Lee's proposal of the property-proportional fine system, "The strange thing is that Governor Lee Jae-myung cited Finland and Germany as examples, claiming that these countries implement the 'property-proportional fine system,' but he insisted on the 'property-proportional fine system' by telling lies."

She also criticized, "It is hard to believe that someone at the level of a governor of Gyeonggi Province cannot distinguish between 'income' and 'property,' so I am curious about his intention," adding, "Even if the intention is to punish people with a lot of property, at least there should be grounds and logic."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.