Photo of damaged taxi falsely linked to alleged drink driving case of South Korean ex-president's daughter

Published on October 9, 2024 at 09:40
3 min read
By SHIM Kyu-Seok, AFP South Korea

An old photo of a taxi that crashed into a hospital in central Seoul was shared in social media posts with a false claim it showed the vehicle hit by the daughter of former South Korean president Moon Jae-in after she was taken to a police station for alleged drink driving on October 5. The photo first circulated in news reports more than two months before the incident involving Moon's daughter.

"The taxi that Moon's daughter crashed into, she shattered it," read the Korean-language caption to a Facebook post on October 7, 2024.

The post was shared alongside an image of a wrecked orange car.

It spread online after Moon's daughter, Moon Da-hye, was briefly taken to a police station for formal identification, then sent home pending investigation after her car collided with a taxi on October 5 (archived link).

According to local media reports, police said Moon took a breathalyser test at the scene and found her blood alcohol concentration to be at 0.14 percent, exceeding the 0.08 threshold for driver's licence revocation.

Screenshot of the false post, captured October 8

Identical claims were shared in Facebook groups supporting various right-wing politicians, including here, here and here.

Comments left by users showed several users appeared to believe the claim.

One user wrote: "An accident like this warrants immediate arrest, why aren't they putting her behind bars?"

"Unfortunately for the driver, he won't be able to work with a car damaged like that," another said.

However, the image showed the aftermath of a different accident in July.

Hospital crash photo

A reverse image search on Google found the image was published by Yonhap News in a report about a taxi that crashed into the National Medical Center in Seoul (archived link).

The image's English-language caption read: "This image shows a battered taxi after it crashed into a hospital in central Seoul on July 3, 2024, which left three pedestrians injured."

Below is a screenshot comparison between the image shared alongside the false claim on Facebook (left) and the original photo published by Yonhap (right):

Screenshot comparison between the image shared alongside the false claim on Facebook (left) and the original photo published by Yonhap (right)

The same picture was published in the agency's photo database with a similar caption, alongside other photos here and here of the same taxi captured from different angles (archived links here, here and here).

Local news organisation Channel A also published dashcam footage from a nearby vehicle showing the orange taxi moments before the collision, as well as footage of the crash's aftermath (archived link).

'Hit a taxi'

Police told reporters on October 7 that Moon's car hit a taxi to her right at 2:51 am on October 5 and that authorities had possession of the taxi's dashcam footage (archived link).

Surveillance footage obtained by local broadcast networks KBS and JTBC appears to show her car hitting the taxi while trying to switch lanes (archived links here and here).

Screenshot from a KBS report showing Moon's car bumping into a taxi

As of October 8, Moon Jae-in has yet to issue an official statement on his daughter's case, though his party issued a brief response that said "drink driving must never happen" (archived link).

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