South Korea President Lee sparks backlash over Holocaust comparison and Gaza video repost

South Korean President Lee Jae-myung triggered a rare diplomatic rupture after reposting a video on X and writing, "This is no different from Comfort Women or the Holocaust," tying alleged abuses in Gaza to some of the darkest crimes in modern memory.

The post, published on April 10, showed Israeli Defense Forces soldiers throwing a body off a rooftop. Coverage later identified the footage as a September 2024 incident in Qabatiya, in the occupied West Bank, not Gaza. Lee retracted the post about three hours later, saying the matter should be verified, but the damage had already spread across social media and into official channels.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry said Lee’s comparison was unacceptable and trivialized the Holocaust, especially because it came shortly before Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. Israeli officials also said the IDF had already described the Qabatiya episode as a "serious incident" that did not conform to its values.

Seoul pushed back through the South Korea Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which said Israel had "misunderstood" Lee’s intent. The ministry said Lee was expressing concern for universal human rights, while South Korea continued to oppose terrorism, violence and all anti-humanitarian acts. It also expressed deep condolences for Holocaust victims.

Lee did not retreat from the broader message. In follow-up posts on April 11, he urged Israel to "reflect" on allegations of rights abuses by its forces and called for respect for sovereignty, universal human rights, international humanitarian law and opposition to aggressive war. The president’s remarks also linked the Gaza war debate to the forced sexual slavery of Korean "comfort women" under Japanese colonial rule from 1910 to 1945, placing the issue at the intersection of two of South Korea’s most sensitive historical memories.

The exchange drew swift criticism inside South Korea as well. Commentators and experts warned that Lee had created unnecessary diplomatic risk by turning a contested video into a moral indictment of Israel. Others noted that Lee had shown interest in Palestinian human rights and international law since he was mayor of Seongnam, a background that helps explain the force of his language but not the fallout it produced.

The episode underscored how quickly social media can collapse the distance between activism and statecraft. A quote-post from Seoul now carried the weight of an official foreign-policy statement, forcing both governments into a public argument over history, verification and the limits of moral comparison at a moment when Washington’s regional partners are already under intense pressure over Gaza and the West Bank.