President Yoon insults American Congress

President Yoon of South Korea was recently overheard using foul language about the American Congress:

앞서 윤 대통령은 21일 미국 뉴욕에서 열린 '글로벌 펀드 제7차 재정공약 회의'에서 바이든 대통령과 환담을 나눈 뒤 회의장을 나오며 "국회에서 이××들이 승인 안 해주면 바이든은 ×팔려서 어떻게 하나"라고 발언하는 장면이 카메라에 찍혀 보도됐다.

The above excerpt tastefully blanks out the curse words with "XX" in their place. My boss, who is Korean-fluent, got curious about what Yoon actually said. There may be audio somewhere, but the boss didn't find it. Instead, he found Korean-language articles, like the above, that blanked out what was actually said, as well as English-language news clips that gave no details. That's interesting when you think about it: despite the press in Korea tilting generally leftward, the conservative Yoon's words were blanked out because a traditional sense of propriety was more important than taking Yoon down a peg. In the US, had someone like Trump uttered something untoward, you can bet the press would have been all over it. In the US, the press generally protects Democrats and pillories Republicans.

But the "traditional sense of propriety" theory has problems. South Korean TV dramas sometimes feature swearing (almost always of the "이개 새끼야!"/"You son of a bitch!" variety—rarely anything stronger, which is reserved for movies), so why not quote swear words in news articles? There's probably some historical reason for this that I'm not aware of.

Anyway, conservative Yoon has insulted a Democrat-majority US Congress, but in context, Yoon was saying that those congressional sons of bitches could make Biden look like a fool if they ended up rejecting Biden's financial proposals (including subsidies for electric vehicles), so maybe Yoon was actually speaking in defense of Democrat Biden. I don't know the larger context, so I can't be sure, and I certainly don't know Yoon's personal attitude toward Biden.

"Hot mike"* moments are a fact of life when you're famous. You have to watch what you say—or not—because, these days, millions are always listening.

__________

*I refuse to write "mic" for "microphone." When I first saw "mike" being replaced with "mic" years ago, my instinctive visceral reaction was that the replacement was stupid. Any time you see an "-ic" ending, the pronunciation is always "ick." Panic, spastic, robotic. Even when the "ic" occurs inside a word, it still sounds like "ick": pelican, musical, domesticated. Only in some rare cases, at the beginning of a word, do you get the "ike" sound: iconoclastic, iconic. So, no: "mic" is no way to abbreviate "microphone." That sounds like "mick" to me, and I won't have it. I'll stick with "mike," thanks.