South Korean education official fired for calling countrymen ‘dogs and pigs’

SEOUL — By Tuesday (July 12), the message board of the South Korean Education Ministry’s website had become a virtual pigsty and dog pen, with commenters venting anger in the form of “Woof! Woof! Oink! Oink!”

The messages were an expression of the widespread outrage at a senior education official who had told reporters that the country should put in place a class system in which 99 per cent of South Koreans should be treated “like dogs and pigs”.

“Hi, I am a South Korean citizen who lives as a dog and pig,” one commenter said. “That may be OK, but I can’t take it when you say my dear son and daughter should also be treated like a dog or pig.”

Another wrote: “If we are dogs and pigs, what does that make you, who live off our taxpayers’ money? Parasites?”

Many commenters ended their messages with: “Woof! Woof! Oink! Oink!” Some suggested that the ministry change its name to the Ministry of Livestock.

The education official’s remarks, first reported by the daily newspaper Kyunghyang Shinmun last week, stirred so much public outrage that Prime Minister Hwang Kyo Ahn was compelled to apologise for the official’s behaviour on Tuesday. On the same day, the Education Ministry announced that it was firing the official, Mr Na Hyang Wook, who was in charge of its policy-making bureau.

“He made outrageous comments that did not fit the image of public servants and severely hurt the people,” Mr Lee Young, vice-minister of education, said.

During a parliamentary hearing on Monday, Mr Na, choked with emotion, said he was so drunk when he met the reporters from Kyunghyang, that he could not remember what he had said. He added that the reported remarks did not reflect his beliefs.

But the newspaper said that he was lying and noted that its reporters had given him several chances to retract or modify his remarks before publishing them.

The outrage, and the government’s quick attempts at damage control, reflect how sensitive South Koreans have become over worsening income inequality, and what officials and critics of the government call a rising tension between the country’s poor and rich.

“I believe that we should solidify a class system in our society,” Mr Na, 47, was quoted as telling Kyunghyang reporters over dinner on Thursday. “The people should be treated like dogs and pigs. It’s enough just to feed them and let them live.”

Asked who “the people” were, he said they were the “99 per cent”, adding that he was trying to belong to “the one per cent,” Kyunghyang said.

He compared South Korea’s so-called 99 per cent to “blacks and Hispanics in the United States who don’t even try to enter politics or climb the social ladder”.

Mr Na also said he did not sympathise with a 19-year-old sub-contractor who was hit and killed by a train in May while carrying out repairs at a subway station in the capital city. An investigation showed that the man had been working without adequate safety measures and that he was paid less than half of what regular subway workers performing similar tasks earn.

When newspapers reported that the worker was given little time for meals — he was found with a package of unopened instant noodles in his bag — his death became a rallying cry for some against the plight of young, poor South Koreans known as “dirt spoons”, who they said stood no chance against “gold spoons”, or the children of the rich.

Thousands of people made pilgrimages to the site of the worker’s death to lay flowers and accused the government of not doing enough to improve social and economic mobility.

Anxiety over rising unemployment among the young and a perceived lack of equal opportunities for the poor have been such hot-button issues in recent years, that addressing them was the biggest campaign promise pledged by all the candidates during the 2012 presidential election.

“I feel waves of anger through our society,” Seoul’s mayor, Mr Park Won Soon, recently said of the nationwide reaction to the subway worker’s death. “The grievances among the weak of society * like contract workers, cleaners and janitors, and the other underprivileged * and their sense of being discriminated against are in a volatile condition.”

Mr Song Hyun Sook, a Kyunghyang editor who was at the dinner with Mr Na, said that Mr Na’s comments were especially shocking because they came from a senior policy-maker on education. Poor families have traditionally looked to education for a ticket out of poverty for their children, often saving their wages for their education.

“What’s more tragic, however, is that his statements don’t point to the problematic thinking of any one individual, but that they reflect the actual reasoning and sense of privilege of the majority of high-ranking government officials,” said an editorial from Hankyoreh, a liberal newspaper.

An editorial in the conservative newspaper Dong-A Ilbo said that Mr Na’s “verbal violence” was “inflammatory”, coming amid deepening economic polarisation.

Such inflammatory sentiments were captured in a comment a 52-year-old man named Kim Min Geun left on the ministry website. He first thanked Mr Na for reminding him that he was a dog.

Then, he said: “Now, you should be careful not to run into me on the street because I am not vaccinated against rabies.” THE NEW YORK TIMES