What is really behind South Korea’s row with Israel?

At least 26 South Korean tankers are thought to be stranded near the Strait of Hormuz. That fact alone may best explain why President Lee Jae Myung walked into a diplomatic firefight with Israel last week, analysts say. The row erupted on Friday when Lee commented on a grainy clip that appeared to show Israeli soldiers pushing a body from a rooftop. The footage, which dates to September 2024, was originally posted by a Palestinian activist account alongside a caption falsely claiming it showed live footage of a child being tortured and thrown from a building. “We need to verify whether this is true, and if so, what actions were taken,” Lee wrote, adding that there was “no difference” between such wartime killings or the Holocaust and “comfort women” – a euphemism for Koreans forced into sexual slavery by Japanese forces during World War II. The comparison landed like a lit match. Israel’s foreign ministry swiftly fired back, accusing Lee of trivialising the massacre of Jews on the eve of the country’s Holocaust Remembrance Day and of amplifying a “fake account” notorious for spreading anti-Israeli disinformation. The video, which Israel said was “investigated and addressed” months ago, reportedly shows an adult militant, not a child, who was killed during an operation in the West Bank. “A small relief, if any, is that it involved a corpse rather than a living person,” Lee wrote in response to his initial post a few hours later. “But even so, such treatment of a body constitutes a violation of international law.” Tankers in limbo South Korea is the world’s 10th-largest economy and relies heavily on oil shipped through the Strait of Hormuz – one of the world’s most important energy chokepoints through which about 25 per cent of global seaborne oil trade passed before the war. Some 26 Korean tankers are currently stranded in the region, according to security analyst Nam Sung-wook, a distinguished professor at Sookmyung Women’s University who previously served as head of South Korea’s Institute for National Security Strategy – making the closure of the strait amid the US-Israel war on Iran an increasingly urgent economic problem. “South Korea can’t be blamed for adding its voice to growing international calls for a ceasefire and an end to human rights abuses,” said Lee Jun-han, a political-science professor at Incheon National University. “However, it was regrettable that President Lee sparked unnecessary controversy by using a two-year-old video presented as live footage.” Before entering politics, Lee was a prominent human rights lawyer and observers say his past informs his instinct to speak out against injustice. But some saw a second, implicit, message in his posts aimed at US President Donald Trump. “He was sending a signal to Washington indirectly that South Korea wouldn’t be roped into participating in a war it didn’t ask for,” said Jhee Byong-kuen, a political-science professor at Chosun University. Trump has grown increasingly vocal in his frustration with what he sees as freeriding allies, singling out South Korea alongside the European Union and Japan for not providing support to Washington’s war effort. Seoul’s damage control As the diplomatic row unfolded over the weekend, Israel’s foreign ministry not only questioned Lee’s motives for sharing the video but also pointedly remarked that he had said nothing about “the recent Iranian and Hezbollah terror attacks against Israeli citizens”. Seoul’s foreign ministry moved to contain the damage on Saturday, expressing regret that Israel had “misunderstood” Lee’s remarks and reframing them as a statement of “universal human rights” rather than a position on any specific conflict. It also reiterated South Korea’s condemnation of terrorism and its empathy for Holocaust victims, without using a formal apology. Lee himself had the last word on Sunday, posting on social media: “The sovereignty of each nation and universal human rights must be respected, and aggressive war should be rejected.” “Empathy applies not only to individuals but also to international relations … You must respect others to be respected in return,” he added. In comments to the Jerusalem Post on Sunday, Israeli scholar Dr Kobby Barda said the issue boiled down to the economic damage that a prolonged war could inflict on South Korea’s economy. “If there are indeed delays or blockages of tankers, from Seoul’s perspective, this is an emergency,” said the senior researcher at the Jewish People Policy Institute in Israel. “Bottom line: this is less a story about Israel and more about a pressured South Korea, energy concerns, Iran and domestic politics. Israel has simply become a tool in the equation.” ‘Diplomatic disaster’ The episode quickly became ammunition for the opposition in South Korea’s fiercely partisan politics. The conservative People Power Party accused Lee of ignoring human rights abuses in North Korea while grandstanding on a conflict thousands of miles away and labelled the row with Israel a “diplomatic disaster”. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party of Korea defended him, pointing to South Korea’s recent co-sponsorship of a UN Human Rights Council resolution on North Korea as evidence of its president’s consistent principles. Analysts were divided on the merits of Lee’s remarks but broadly agreed he should have exercised greater caution. “Referring to the Holocaust in political messaging is taboo,” said political-science professor Choi Hyun-jin of Kyung Hee University. “Any remarks that could even be slightly misunderstood as antisemitic are unnecessary.” Lee Shin-wha, a fellow professor of political science at Korea University, was more blunt: “President Lee should not imitate President Trump. South Korea needs to maintain strategic ambiguity in sensitive international issues.” Messages conveyed via social media “carry high risks of being misunderstood out of context”, she added. “Especially given the institutional weight of a president’s words.” This was not Lee’s first brush with social media diplomacy gone awry. In February, he shared a message in Khmer threatening “ruin” on criminal organisations targeting Koreans – a post he later quietly deleted after Cambodia’s government made inquiries.

What is really behind South Korea’s row with Israel?

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Lee Jae Myung’s clash was about more than human rights, analysts say – it was about energy security and sending a message to Donald Trump

Lee Jae Myung’s clash was about more than human rights, analysts say – it was about energy security and sending a message to Donald Trump