President Lee Jae Myung speaks at a Cabinet meeting held at the Blue House in central Seoul on May 12, 2026. [JOINT PRESS CORPS]
President Lee Jae Myung blasted recent news reports accusing Blue House policy chief Kim Yong-beom of calling for the redistribution of chipmaker profits to the public, calling them "fake news" and denouncing some outlets for "malicious practices" that "harm democracy."
"What policy chief Kim Yong-beom said was that we should review methods to start public dividends on excess tax revenue collected from excess profit from the AI sector," Lee wrote in an X post on Wednesday.
Earlier on Tuesday, Kim came under fire for calling for so-called public dividends in a series of Facebook posts regarding finance and economic policies starting on Friday.
"The gains of the AI infrastructure era are not the result of individual companies alone," Kim wrote. "All of their gains are built on an industrial foundation that has been built over decades by the entire population. Part of those gains should therefore be structurally returned to all Koreans."
According to President Lee, Kim's argument concerned only the excess tax arising from excess profit, not the company's profit itself.
Lee accused some outlets of editing Kim's words and spreading "malicious fake news" that Kim was "calling for distributing companies' excess profit to the people through public dividends."
"Why, even though Kim denied this and kindly explained his argument, would [some media] continue such malicious reporting?" he asked.
President Lee Jae Myung's X post uploaded on May 13, 2026 [SCREEN CAPTURE]
Lee added, "We must remember that political criticism must be based on truth, or it can harm democracy."
Kim's alleged public dividend call was partly blamed for Tuesday's market crash.
"The comments in a Facebook post by presidential policy chief Kim Yong-beom fueled sharp swings in Korean stocks on Tuesday as investors struggled to parse the scope of the proposals," reported Bloomberg. "The benchmark Kospi sank as much as 5.1 percent, then pared losses after the influential policy adviser clarified he wanted to tap “excess tax revenue” generated from the AI boom, rather than roll out a new windfall levy on corporate profits."
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