During South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s visit to Europe, the government has made repeated missteps while promoting his diplomatic endeavors.
The presidential Blue House uploaded a post on its official Instagram page on June 15 saying, “President and First Lady Moon visited the Stift Heiligenkreuz accompanied by the Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen and his wife.” The post had two emojis – one was the South Korean national flag and the other was Germany’s national flag. The Blue House changed the image to the Austrian national flag after it realized its mistake. It took them 6 hours to realize it. An official from the Blue House said, “there was a mistake made while we were working on it, and we changed it right after we found out about it.”
It was the latest in a string of recent diplomatic blunders.
On June 13, the government uploaded a poster on its official briefing website showing a photo of Moon with other leaders attending the G7 summit held in Cornwall, Great Britain. In the photo, President Moon Jae-in was standing in the first row. From left to right, there were French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Moon and U.S. President Joe Biden. However, it turned out that South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was standing next to Macron, but he was deleted from the photo that the South Korean government uploaded.
The government included a caption reading “the Republic of Korea’s status reflected on a photo” on a cropped version it shared without Ramaphosa. It added that “this situation and this image show the status of the Republic of Korea.” “We have come this far, and it is the result of the hardworking efforts by the great people who overcame such difficult times.”
It was interpreted that the Moon administration was trying to emphasize that he was in front of Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who were all on the second row.
Park Soo-hyun, senior secretary for public communications at the Blue House, shared the edited version of the photo and said, “this photo speaks for the Republic of Korea’s national dignity and status more than hundreds of words, and President Moon Jae-in’s position in the photo with other G-7 leaders is the Republic of Korea’s current position in the world.” In a TV appearance, Park said, “the Republic of Korea was technically the only country invited to the summit and President Moon was assigned to that important position.” Leaders from Australia, India and South Africa were also invited to the summit, but Park used the word “technically” to mislead people to believe South Korea was the only country invited from outside the G7.
Moon was able to stand next to Johnson, who was from the host country since his term began the earliest among the other presidents. Being president is considered a higher position than prime minister in diplomacy, so this was why the other prime ministers were on the second row. Moon’s placement in the photo had nothing to do with “national status.”
The official photo with President Ramaphosa was circulating online, and people in South Korea found out that the government’s photo was different. The South Korean government changed the photo 15 hours after it was first posted.
The South Korean people started commenting on the post and criticized the government for manipulating it to make it look like Moon was in the center of the photo. There were comments such as, “Did you seriously cut off the President of South Africa to make the Republic of Korea look good?” Some people also showed concern that the Moon government’s manipulation could be interpreted as racially-motivated, since Ramaphosa was the only black person in the photo.
After receiving strong backlash, the government changed the photo and said, “it has been edited due to an error that was made while making the image.” An official from the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism told media outlets that, “a designer edited the photo to make it look better before uploading it, and we acknowledge the fact that we made a mistake for not being able to catch this ahead of time.” The official added that, “it was not trying to make President Moon look better but was just a simple mistake.”
Rep. Ha Tae-kyung from the main opposition People Power Party wrote on his Facebook page that, “the Blue House suffering from incurable ‘promotion syndrome’ made a big mistake again, and it appears that they wanted to create a photo to show that Moon Jae-in is the center of the world and other objects go around it.”
He added that, “they were caught manipulating the photo by cutting off the president of South Africa which is an internationally humiliating episode.” Ha said that the Blue House should apologize to the people for deceiving them and damaging Korea’s dignity, as well as apologize to the South African people.
The South Korean government was also recently caught using a satellite photo of Pyongyang instead of Seoul in an official video that was supposed to be used at an opening ceremony of the recently held P4G Seoul Summit. The government said this was a mistake as well.
Many people online wrote that this kind of manipulation is something that communist countries such as North Korea frequently do. Kim Jong-un’s family has been known to manipulate photos to make them look taller, skinnier, more charismatic, more humble, more generous, and most importantly, always positioned in the center of the frame.
