South Korean opposition leader was not pictured 'holding anti-Trump sign' after US election

"Is he crazy? The criminal who calls the US president a criminal," read a Korean-language Facebook post shared on November 10, 2024.

The post included an image of Lee, the opposition Democratic Party candidate for president in 2022 and its current leader, holding up a placard that appeared to say, "Trump = criminal."

The image was shared days after Trump won the 2024 US presidential election, beating Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in a stunning comeback to the White House (archived link).

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Screenshot of the Facebook post with the doctored image. Captured November 11, 2024.

Trump is currently out on bail in three criminal jurisdictions and fighting gigantic civil penalties for sexual assault and fraud. He also faces sentencing on nearly three dozen felonies related to his 2016 presidential campaign.

While not convicted, Lee was indicted on several criminal charges including making false statements during his 2022 presidential run and a bribery charge related to an alleged transfer of funds to North Korea (archived links here and here).

Lee has argued the charges he faces amount to persecution by a politically-minded prosecution service loyal to South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, who led the organisation before beating the opposition leader by a razor-thin margin to become president in 2022 (archived link). 

Similar posts also shared the doctored image on right-wing user groups on Facebook here and here, as well as on South Korean forums Ilbe and Naver Band. 

Comments on the posts indicated several users mistakenly believed the image was genuine.

One user wrote: "This man wants to get himself killed, what a nutjob."

"He's on his way to Guantanamo Bay," another wrote, referring to the US detention facility. 

Parliamentary hearing

A reverse image search on Google found the original image showing Lee with a sign featured in a report by local internet newspaper Etoday published on October 18, 2021 (archived link).

The original sign read: "Those who took the money = criminals; those who shared the profits = thieves." 

Its caption read, "Democratic party candidate and Gyeonggi governor Lee Jae-myung responds to questions by lawmakers of the National Assembly's security and public administration committee during a parliamentary audit hearing of Gyeonggi province held at provincial headquarters on the 18th."

Below is a screenshot comparison between the doctored image shared on Facebook (left) and the original image published by Edaily (right):

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Screenshot comparison between the doctored image shared on Facebook (left) and the original image published by Edaily (right)

According to a Kyunghyang Shinmun report featuring a different photo of Lee with the same sign, he held it in response to accusations by the People Power Party (PPP) that he granted favours to a private developer in a land development scandal which became one of the centrepieces of the 2022 election (archived link).

Lee in turn accused PPP members who allegedly received bribes from the developer of being the real criminals in the case, highlighting that he received no windfalls from the deal, according to Yonhap news agency's transcript of his remarks at the hearing (archived link). 

Lee's unedited sign can also be seen clearly in footage of the hearing captured by broadcaster YTN (archived link).

Following Trump's re-election, there have been no official reports of Lee publicly criticising him as of November 11, 2024.

The South Korean opposition leader sent a letter to the US embassy in Seoul congratulating Trump, expressing a desire for "intimate cooperation" between the allies, according to Yonhap (archived link).

In a separate public discussion on the future of the Korean peninsula under a second Trump presidency, Lee described him as a "leader who has a maximised mercantile sense of reality," expressing concern that his leadership style may not align well with Yoon's ideologically driven worldview (archived link).

Lee has been a frequent target of misinformation debunked by AFP here, here, here and here.