In the Lee Myung-bak rat poster incident in Seoul, South Korea, university instructor Park Jeong-su (박정수) was indicted by the South Korean authorities for drawing a face of a rat on a promotional poster for the 2010 G-20 Seoul summit. The conservative Lee Myung-bak government was criticized for encouraging institutionalized censorship and abuse of authority, while the Supreme Prosecutors' Office of the Republic of Korea (SPO) was accused of being overly-supportive of the government.
University instructor Park Jeong-su vandalized a G-20 promotional poster by drawing a rat before the 2010 G-20 Seoul summit.[1] There was concerns that he was released under the court orders despite the SPO over-pressuring his investigation to cater the ruling party.[2] "Rat" was the popular nickname of then-President Lee Myung-bak. The letter "G" in "G20" is a homophone to "rat" in Korean. The Non-governmental organization citizen group called the People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy planned to present his incident to the 16th meeting of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.[3] He later argued in his own defense that his rat drawing of the South Korean president has artistic merits.[4] He was later fined.[5] This has caused disputes of whether freedom of speech is legally upheld in South Korea.
Lee Chang-dong had petitioned against the prosecution of Park Jeong-su.[6]
Some netizens proposed to pay his fine by selling T-shirts of his rat drawing.[7]
Park later remarked "after I experienced this incident, despite the freedom of the press and the freedom of speech are mandated by law, I feel that the political authority dictates both of them in reality".[8]
A US-based South Korean artist was arrested for showing a comical portrait of Lee Myung-bak in a Nazi uniform similar to Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator.[9]