A ruling party flap has erupted over a handshake between its leader and President Lee Jae Myung, and its absence from government footage of Lee's departure for an overseas trip.
What started the latest spat between a Lee supporter group and another group loyal to Democratic Party of Korea Chair Jung Chung-rae was a three-minute clip released this week on "Lee Imagine," a YouTube channel run by government media outlet KTV.
The clip titled "A scene of President Lee's departure from Seoul Air Base, unedited full video" shows Lee shaking hands with government and ruling party figures before departing for Singapore. But the omission of Lee's handshake with Jung sparked consternation among his supporters.
The video prompted Kim Ou-joon, a left-leaning broadcaster who runs the YouTube outlet News Factory, to hint that Jung may have been edited out on purpose.
In response, National Assembly's Science, ICT, Broadcasting and Communications Committee chair Rep. Choi Min-hee took it upon herself to come up with “response measures.”
"It seems difficult for Jung's office or the party to take action in response to this case, so our office started doing fact checking on our own," Choi wrote on Ddanzi, an online community run by Kim.
"We will brief you what we learn from (the fact-checking) and come up with a response measure."
Lee loyalists on "Jae Myung's Village," an online community for the president’s supporters, responded in similarly zealous fashion.
"Amid the serious demonization of President Lee and Prime Minister Kim Min-seok, (Choi)'s action to investigate the YouTube channel to archive Lee's video records and seek measures just because it failed to record a handshake scene is utterly unacceptable," read a post proposing her expulsion from the community.
Choi was expelled after members voted 95 percent in favor of the proposal.
As Choi revealed her expulsion on her Facebook page Tuesday, she said the trust toward the community could be undermined.
"I believe that trust toward (Jae Myung's Village) will only be maintained if the expulsion is not unreasonable," she said.
The same community in February ejected both Jung loyalist Rep. Lee Sung-yoon, and the party chairman himself. It claimed the two had caused "discord within the party" after a failed merger with the Rebuilding Korea Party.
Jung was also accused of vetting failures after the party leadership recommended a a special counsel candidate who had represented a businessman who testified against President Lee in a criminal case.
In her Facebook post Tuesday, Choi said that KTV had omitted the handshake because of a shortage of staff, as well as its lack of access to videos from Cheong Wa Dae's media pool. She asked for an increased budget for KTV to prevent future failures to cover Jung-related handshakes and similar omissions.
Concluding her investigation, Choi said that one of the two KTV staff sent to cover Lee's depature took too long to move the camera, and therefore could not film the handshake as Jung was the first person whom Lee shook hands with.
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