PPP calls for Jeong Dong-young's dismissal after Kim Yo-jong's 'human trash' tirade

The People Power Party on Saturday called on Unification Minister Jeong Dong-young to step down and urged President Lee Jae Myung to dismiss him immediately, saying Jeong had failed to respond adequately after Kim Yo-jong, director of the Korean Workers' Party's General Affairs Department, unleashed a torrent of insults against the South Korean government.

Park Sung-hoon, the PPP's chief spokesperson, said in a statement that Jeong should "squarely face the harm his conduct has caused to national security and decide his own fate." He added that "a minister who deepens public anxiety has no right to hold that position."

Kim on Friday dismissed the Unification Ministry's plan to provide medical equipment to North Korea as "a sequel to a self-directed clown show" and said the North would "ignore and disregard the human trash of South Korea." The ministry had announced Wednesday a plan to send approximately 9.3 billion won ($6.94 million) worth of medical equipment to Gangdong County Hospital near Pyongyang.

Park described Kim's remarks as "abusive language that goes beyond mere mockery" and said Jeong "has not put forward any meaningful position in response."

Park also said Jeong's statements were being used in North Korean propaganda. At the UN General Assembly's First Committee at UN headquarters in New York on Thursday (local time), South Korea's UN Ambassador Cha Ji-hun publicly called on North Korea to apologize over a landmine explosion in the Demilitarized Zone. North Korea's representative pushed back by invoking Jeong's name directly, claiming that even a South Korean official had said it was difficult to characterize the incident as a deliberate North Korean attack.

Jeong had said at a National Assembly national audit of the Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee on Wednesday that it was "not yet possible to identify it specifically as a landmine attack." Kim also cited that remark in her statement on Thursday.

"The minister effectively provided grounds for North Korea's claims," Park said. "The words of South Korea's unification minister are already being used as material for North Korean propaganda."

Park also took issue with Jeong's use of the word "accident" to describe the landmine explosion. Three soldiers were wounded when a landmine detonated in the western front DMZ on Sept. 21, and the military concluded that the cause was a landmine buried south of the MDL by North Korean forces.

"The public cannot entrust national security to a minister who maintains a submissive posture even as North Korea hurls insults, and who calls it an 'accident' even as our soldiers suffer serious injuries," Park said.

Park said Kim's "abusive language and mockery are not mere rhetoric" and predicted they were "a signal of more serious North Korean provocations to come."

Park added that "a minister's post is not a place to air personal political beliefs — it is a place to protect the safety of the people," and called on the government to "swiftly draw up substantive and concrete measures to respond firmly and sternly to North Korean provocations."