[Anchor]
Political disputes continue over President Lee Jae-myung's overseas trip schedules. As President Lee directly countered the opposition party's criticism that he makes too many overseas trips, the Fact Is team checked how this level actually compares to past presidents.
Reporter Lee Gyeong-won has the details.
[Reporter]
It all started on October 29 at the National Assembly's audit of the government.
[Kim Seung-su / People Power Party lawmaker (October 29): While public livelihoods are collapsing like this, the President has already made 14 overseas trips to 23 countries.]
The dispute became even fiercer as President Lee strongly retaliated on his social media, writing, "Pigs see only pigs."
What you are looking at now is the record of overseas trips during President Lee's 17 months in office.
There is quite a lot of content, but looking through it, it was analyzed to be a total of 14 trips to 23 countries, just as the People Power Party claimed.
So, just how frequent is this?
When comparing this to former presidents strictly based on the 17-month mark in office, using data from the Presidential Archives:
First, regarding the number of trips, it was similar to former Presidents Lee Myung-bak, Moon Jae-in, and Yoon Suk Yeol, ranging between 10 and 15 times.
Next, regarding the countries visited, President Lee had the highest number, which is interpreted as being because he visited multiple countries together during a single trip.
As South Korea's international status rises, presidential visits abroad are also showing a trend of becoming more frequent. Taking this into consideration, it is difficult to conclude that overseas trip schedules have become unusually more frequent compared to the past.
This is not a story that just popped up yesterday or today.
Analyzing commentaries related to presidential overseas trips during the Yoon Suk Yeol administration—when the Democratic Party was the opposition party—revealed that at least over 20 critical commentaries could be found.
Words like "luxurious trip" and "squandering the budget" were also used.
[Han Min-su / Democratic Party lawmaker (November 2023): Public livelihoods and the economy are driven to the edge of a cliff. This is not the time for the president to go on luxury overseas trips.]
It is essentially a repetition of similar political strife with the roles reversed. With the budget political showdown starting right today (November 2), the political circles are signaling a second round of political conflict over the "summit diplomacy" budget, which has increased by more than double compared to last year to around 65 billion won.
(Photo: Seol Min-hwan | Video Editing: Park Ji-in | Design: Lee Ga-jin | Writer: HYOJIN | The Intern: JUNGWON)
(Photo courtesy of Yonhap News)
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