"Passion Pay Will Be Destroyed" Reports Flood in on Lee Jae-myung... "Pyeongsan Bookstore"

Kang Sa-bin, Spokesperson for the People Power Party, "Lee Jae-myung Must Speak Up"

The controversy over the recruitment of unpaid volunteers by ‘Pyeongsan Bookstore,’ operated by former President Moon Jae-in who advocated for ‘income-led growth,’ continues to heat up day by day. This time, a post written six years ago by Lee Jae-myung, leader of the Democratic Party of Korea, titled “I will crush passion pay,” has been brought back into the spotlight.

Kang Sa-bin, deputy spokesperson of the People Power Party, issued a statement on the 8th, saying, “I am reporting the case of former President Moon Jae-in’s ‘Pyeongsan Bookstore volunteer recruitment’ to Leader Lee Jae-myung.”

[Image source=Yonhap News]

The post Kang mentioned was uploaded by Leader Lee in January 2017 on Facebook under the title “I will crush passion pay.”

In the post, Lee defined passion pay as “a practice that exploits the labor of talented young people by forcing them to work without pay or for very low wages under the pretext of passion,” and declared, “Please report any cases; I will verify all of them.”

Kang said, “Former President Moon has consistently raised his voice against exploiting youth labor under the name of passion pay, saying ‘There should be no exploitation of young labor under the name of passion pay’ and ‘People should be properly compensated for their efforts, not passion pay.’ He also rapidly raised the minimum wage during his term while advocating for income-led growth.”

Photo by Lee Jae-myung Facebook

He continued, “However, former President Moon himself tried to exploit labor without proper compensation at the bookstore he established. When strong controversy arose, he withdrew the recruitment and it ended as an ‘attempted passion pay’ case,” criticizing him.

Kang added, “I hope Leader Lee Jae-myung personally verifies former President Moon’s ‘attempted passion pay’ and raises a responsible voice.”

Netizens posted comments about Lee’s Facebook post, such as “Should we report Pyeongsan Bookstore here?” and “Didn’t he say ‘People come first’?” Others reacted, “Even when self-employed people complain about hardships, the minimum wage was raised recklessly, but now he won’t even pay the minimum wage, or is he saying he won’t pay at all?”

Pyeongsan Bookstore, opened by former President Moon in Pyeongsan Village, Yangsan, Gyeongnam, announced the recruitment of volunteers on the 5th but withdrew it three days later amid the ‘passion pay’ controversy.

The Pyeongsan Bookstore side stated, “The volunteer recruitment was intended for future public interest projects the foundation plans to undertake. We wanted to organize a volunteer group in advance, but it seems we were overambitious. We will announce public interest projects and recruit volunteers when necessary in the future.”

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