Education Minister Choi Kyo-jin Calls Mockery of May 18 Uprising 'Freedom of Expression'

At a National Assembly Education Committee audit on the 7th, Education Minister Choi Kyo-jin responded that the baseball players' remarks mocking the May 18 Democratic Uprising "do fall within the realm of freedom of expression." Rep. Park Jeong-hoon of the People Power Party asked the minister, in effect, that if the content of the film 'Assassins' counts as freedom of expression, then surely the Baekjae High baseball players' remarks would also be freedom of expression. Minister Choi replied, "I believe adults who improperly taught the students this history also bear responsibility."

Minister Choi had previously stated on Facebook on July 1, after the Baekjae High baseball team controversy broke, that "distorted historical awareness and cheers demeaning a region are clearly inappropriate conduct." Article 11 of the 'Basic Principles of School Civic Education,' finalized by the National Education Commission on September 17, stipulates that schools should teach students to recognize that words and actions involving prejudice, insults, mockery and belittlement, hatred and discrimination run counter to the attitude of a democratic citizen.

Lawmakers from the ruling party and teachers' unions criticized the remarks as a gaffe showing the minister "cannot even distinguish hatred from freedom of expression." Ko Min-jeong of the Democratic Party of Korea, the ruling party's secretary on the Assembly's Education Committee, said, "A situation is unfolding in which the political establishment cannot even tell mockery apart from freedom of expression." She added, "You sit as head of the Ministry of Education, which is supposed to teach democracy," and "If the minister and Education Ministry officials do not clearly understand the relationship between freedom of expression and mockery, democracy as a whole will be shaken." Lee Bo-mi, a member of the National Education Commission and head of the Daegu Teachers' Union, said, "It is astonishing that Minister Choi called the Baekjae High baseball team's anti-May 18 conduct 'freedom of expression,'" calling it "a gaffe that betrays the basic common sense of democratic citizenship education—that one must distinguish hatred from freedom of expression and repudiate hatred."