PPP floor leader calls for Defense Minister Ahn's dismissal over 'bizarre' remarks

People Power Party floor leader Jeong Jeom-sik said Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back's "very existence is a mockery of the military" and called on President Lee Jae Myung to dismiss him immediately.

Speaking at a floor leadership meeting at the National Assembly on Tuesday, Jeong said Ahn had recently drawn sharp criticism for a series of "bizarre" remarks. During a visit to the Air Force Academy in June, Ahn cited the Chinese phrase "처변불경" — meaning remaining unshaken even as circumstances change — attributed it to Mao Zedong, and said Mao's personal motto was his own as well.

Jeong said it was "outrageous" that a defense minister facing desertion allegations, serving under an administration that cannot even name the country's main enemy, had stood before military cadets and "boasted of treating Mao Zedong's motto as gospel." He also noted the phrase is sometimes attributed to Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek, not Mao, and said Ahn had adopted it as his own motto "without even knowing its origin."

When the Defense Ministry defended the remark as a "humanistic metaphor," Jeong said, "If mixing up friend and foe — or reversing them entirely — counts as the humanities, then pro-Pyongyang spies should be called great literary figures."

Jeong went on to say the Defense Ministry had already sparked controversy by using the phrase "항미원조" — the Chinese communist term for the Korean War meaning "resist America, aid Korea" — in a Korean War education program. "That is precisely why front-line troops ended up standing guard with unloaded rifles and nearly opened fire on a US military drone by mistake," he said.