A debate on racism in Korea was sparked over the weekend by a news report on the country’s first naturalized-citizen lawmaker, Rep. Jasmine Lee, who was seen eating chocolate in the National Assembly’s plenary hall.

Local media outlet Focus News claimed last Friday that Lee had violated parliamentary law during the Dec. 2 plenary session by eating a candy bar and demonstrated inappropriate behavior by playing games on her cellphone. The Assembly law bars lawmakers from bringing food into the hall.

Other news media outlets followed suit, with headlines such as “Lee is eating candy bar and playing games, as if the National Assembly is her own house.” By Wednesday, there were 74 stories under similar headlines posted on Naver, the country’s largest search engine.

What otherwise could have been overlooked as a minor reportage, brought a flood of online comments that quickly took the form of personal attacks on Lee and her race. Some Internet users went as far as describing her as a “disgusting foreigner who is a waste of our taxpayer’s money.”

“She is such an embarrassment to the Assembly. I hope that her party will deprive her of the lawmaker position and throw her back into her own country,” one netizen wrote in a comment on one such story. Lee is a ruling Saenuri Party lawmaker who was elected in 2012 through the proportional representation list system.
 
 

Such criticisms of Lee, particularly those based on racial bias against immigrants of Southeast Asian descent, have raised ire of their own.  

“Now that Lee has become a lawmaker, she has to face tougher criticism if she violates the law. But If she is criticized for a crime that she didn’t commit, like something beyond her eating a candy bar during the plenary session, that is a whole different story,” said Seol Dong-hoon, a sociology professor from Chonbuk National University.

“The depiction of Lee and immigrants in many news reports are only made from Korean perspectives, not from the perspective of immigrants. They focus on how the Korean people are affected by the immigrants, which leads to more negative reports than positive ones,” said Choi Jin-bong, a professor of mass communication at Sungkonghoe Univeristy.

While Lee’s office remained low-key about the scandal, without making any public comments, her aides noted that they decided not to respond to the negative reports, saying that the response will only create more biased reports against her, as she has often suffered from unfavorable coverage since taking office.

“Admittedly, she should have paid more attention (to the parliamentary rules) ... but we try to not pay too much attention to media reports. We decided to refrain from making public comments because they are often relayed to the public in a way that we didn’t intend,” Lee’s office told The Korea Herald.

Lee has often found herself on the receiving end. In 2014, media outlets reported that she opposed the parliamentary motion to build a monument to commemorate South Korea’s sex slavery during Japan’s colonial rule. Some reports cast her as an “unpatriotic” lawmaker sympathizing with imperialist Japan. 

But she later explained that she merely disagreed with the location of the monument, which she said should be built in a more open space rather than inside the National Assembly -- the location that was mentioned in the motion.

Last December, she was again caught up in a controversy after criticism that she drafted a bill that provided what some felt was excessive protection of illegal immigrants by providing them with absolute immunity from being deported if their children attended Korean schools.

However, it was later discovered that the bill in question was not drafted by Lee. Although she did propose a similar bill few days later, it had suggested the authorities temporarily suspend the deportation of the illegal immigrant whose children are attending schools.

Critics cautioned that such rampant unfounded and sensationalist reports and criticisms against Lee represent Korea’s long-held bias against non-natives and the persistent discrimination they face.

“Her being a Philippines-born lawmaker is newsworthy and sensational. Given South Korea’s subtle racial discrimination against immigrants, those reports give an opportunity for racially-biased Koreans to express their underlying hatred toward immigrants,” professor Choi said. 

Lee’s “candy bar” story attracted 4,871 comments while a story about 50 lawmakers who did not show up to pass the budget deal on Dec. 2 merely got 152 comments. Most of the comments on Lee’s story were critical of the lawmaker.

“With many media outlets springing up in South Korea, they tend to pick out stories based on how sensational they are, not how important the issue is,” Choi said.

Meanwhile, other South Korean Internet users also stood up in defense of Lee, criticizing those tied to racism.

“There is no conservative and liberal when it comes to attacks on Lee. It is nothing but racism toward a female lawmaker who comes from a country that is less rich than Korea. I am afraid she has become an easy target for such kinds of attack,” one of the postings said.

By Yeo Jun-suk (jasonyeo@heraldcorp.com)