Text falsely shared as speech South Korean president was to give at US Congress in April 2023

"Text version of President Yoon Suk Yeol's speech on April 27, 2023 to the upper and lower houses of the US Congress," reads the Korean-language text shared on Facebook here on April 25.

The purported script stresses the importance of Seoul's alliance with Washington, and bashes the administration of former South Korean president Moon Jae-in for "tricking the world by openly supporting North Korea".

As president, Moon championed engagement with Pyongyang (archived link). His diplomacy ultimately failed, with the North now more belligerent than ever, and his attempts at dialogue enraged many security hawks.

Since he left office in May 2022, his opponents have accused him of being a "spy" and called for him "to be deported to North Korea".

AFP has previously debunked misinformation targeting Moon here, here and here (archived links here, here and here).

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Screenshot of the false claim shared on Facebook, captured on May 2, 2023.

The claim began circulating online days before Yoon addressed the US Congress on April 27 as part of a state visit to the United States (archived link).

AFP reported that Yoon and US President Joe Biden adopted the "Washington Declaration" during the six-day visit, a joint statement committing the United States to a series of measures to better defend South Korea against the nuclear threats of North Korea (archived link).

Identical text claiming to show Yoon's speech was also shared on Facebook here, here and here.

Comments on the posts suggest some users believed it showed the text of Yoon's actual speech.

"I am proud of him for having such a right and sane mind," one user said.

"This is such a well written speech, it perfectly encapsulates this government's identity," said another.

The purported script, however, is a fabrication and differs from the speech Yoon actually delivered.

Yoon's address to Congress

South Korea's presidential spokesperson told AFP the text is not Yoon's real speech.

"It is unrelated to the presidential office," the spokesperson said on May 1.

A keyword search on YouTube found a recorded clip of Yoon's 44-minute speech published on his official YouTube channel, as well as by multiple South Korean news organisations, including here and here (archived links here, here and here).

In these clips, Yoon's English-language speech is dubbed over in Korean.

Yoon's full speech was also shared on the official YouTube channel of C-SPAN in its original English (archived link).

The full English-language transcript of Yoon's speech is also available on the official website of South Korea's presidential office (archived link).

An analysis of the recordings and the official transcript showed significant differences between the text that was falsely shared on social media and Yoon's actual speech.

The two texts begin differently, with Yoon quoting the Gettysburg Address to talk about his commitment to freedom, whereas the text shared on social media starts with the phrase, "I am South Korea's president."

A section in the false text that accuses South Korea's former government of "working for enemies" does not appear anywhere in Yoon's speech.

And Yoon also devotes a portion of his actual speech to discussing North Korea and his hard-line policy to push for its denuclearisation, but the fabricated script shared online only refers to North Korea in the context of divisions within South Korea and to criticise Moon.