Lee Jun-seok says acrostic poem for Oh Se-hoon was just a toast, aided by ChatGPT

Reform Party lawmaker Lee Jun-seok pushed back Monday against political readings of an acrostic poem he recited at a dinner with Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon, calling it a simple toast and cautioning against reading too much into it.

Speaking on Channel A radio's "Politics Signal," Lee addressed the Oct. 26 dinner with Oh, at which he composed and recited an acrostic poem using the syllables of the mayor's name. When the host suggested the gesture had been interpreted as a move with an eye toward a future presidential bid — one cycle after Oh — Lee said all roughly 10 attendees had taken turns offering toasts. "Rep. Yoon Sang-hyeon and I simply chose the acrostic format," he said.

The poem Lee recited — loosely rendered as "Like a roly-poly toy, you weather life's storms, and now a warm breeze blows" — had drawn attention in political circles.

"Even at a dinner with staff after the 2021 by-election, I said something along the lines of the roly-poly," Lee said. "This time it was upgraded with help from ChatGPT."

He added that the poem stuck in people's minds "probably because the expression 'weathering life's storms like a roly-poly' fit so perfectly."

On the suggestion that the dinner signaled ambitions for a future presidential run, Lee said it was simply one person congratulating another. "Oh had just been acquitted, and I wanted to celebrate, person to person, that he was finally free from the ordeal he had been through," he said.

Lee said he would have done the same for anyone else who had endured legal hardship and come through it, adding that he had also sent congratulations to former People Power Party leader Kim Ki-hyeon, who was recently acquitted in a first-instance ruling on charges of violating the anti-graft law.

"The fact that people interpret something so naturally human as politically motivated suggests that basic human relationships have largely disappeared from the political world," he said.