President Lee Jae-myung during a State Council meeting [Photo: Yonhap News]

The presumption of innocence one needs for oneself must also apply to others.

President Lee Jae-myung has spoken of "basic common sense" to Israel. 

Regarding the seizure of a Gaza aid flotilla, he pressed, "Was that Israeli territorial waters?", "They are violating even the minimum international norms," and "Isn't there basic common sense, regardless of law?" 

He even mentioned the International Criminal Court's (ICC) arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying, "Let us also make a judgment."

It is natural for the government to intervene when Korean nationals are detained abroad. It should provide consular assistance, demand their release, and protest any unfair treatment. Protecting citizens is the president's duty. 

However, protecting citizens and definitively stating legal principles are different matters. 

President Lee's remarks went beyond protecting detained citizens to encompass Israel's naval blockade, the seizure in international waters, the nature of the Gaza war, and Prime Minister Netanyahu's criminal responsibility.

A State Council meeting is not a debate program. The president's words carry more weight than a Foreign Ministry statement and sometimes reach the opposing country faster than official documents.

The law cannot be overridden by common sense.

The issue of the Gaza aid flotilla seizure is not a matter that can be dismissed with a single question like "Was that Israeli territorial waters?". 

It must be examined by distinguishing whether the naval blockade was legally declared, whether the aid flotilla received prior warning, whether it actually attempted to violate the blockade, and whether the treatment of those detained after the seizure was appropriate. 

The Sanremo Manual, a document for experts summarizing the principles of international law applicable to armed conflict at sea, also mentions the possibility of capturing vessels that violate or attempt to violate a blockade.

Therefore, what the president should have done first was not to cry "common sense," but to separate and verify the facts and the legal principles. 

Israel can be criticized. 

The military operations in Gaza, civilian casualties, and access for aid are subjects of significant controversy in the international community. However, when speaking of international law, one must be more accurate. When speaking of citizen protection, one must be more precise. 

When anger precedes, diplomacy becomes emotion, not principle.

Anger faster than verification

This is not the first time President Lee has made remarks concerning Israel. 

Previously, his remarks, which seemed to equate civilian casualties during the Gaza war with the Holocaust, drew a backlash from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The Holocaust was not a simple casualty of war. It was a crime of extermination of Jews systematically planned and executed by Nazi Germany. The moment such a historical crime is easily equated with the current casualties in the Gaza war, the remarks go beyond humanitarian criticism to become an issue of historical perception. 

The problem is not the direction of criticism towards Israel, but that the language of criticism failed to withstand the historical context and facts. 

The Starbucks incident also follows the same pattern. 

While controversy arose over the phrases "Tank Day" and "Hit the desk," a significant portion of the controversy was closer to an expansion of interpretation than to confirmed intent. 

In particular, connecting the expression "Hit the desk" to the phrase "Hit and it was gasped" from the Park Jong-cheol torture death case was an imposition of meaning rather than a confirmed fact. 

It is connecting an expression that could describe placing a product on a desk with the memory of another historical event. 

However, the president presented that interpretation as fact. 

He criticized Starbucks Korea, calling it "inhumane and despicable behavior by low-quality merchants" and mentioned moral, administrative, legal, and political responsibilities. 

A president's words are not a consumer boycott post. The moment a president calls a specific company "low-quality merchants," it becomes not criticism, but a brand of power. 

The controversy over the remarks about Cambodia also falls into the same category. 

Regarding the online scam crimes in Cambodia, President Lee posted on social media with phrases like "If you touch a Korean, you will be ruined," also in Khmer. The intention to strongly respond to transnational crimes against Koreans is understandable. 

However, there are Korean residents, business people, missionaries, students, and long-term visitors in Cambodia. Even if the expression targets criminal organizations, it can be perceived as an insulting warning to the Cambodian society, and the burden of that could fall on the local Korean community. 

It is difficult to escape criticism that it was a rash act that did not sufficiently consider the safety of the local Korean residents while speaking of protecting citizens. 

Cautious with the oil tanker, enraged with Israel

This selective language becomes clearer when compared to the oil tanker incident. 

When the Korean vessel KN Wave suffered damage in the Strait of Hormuz, U.S. President Trump publicly identified Iran as the attacker. 

However, the South Korean government did not immediately accept this as its official stance. National Security Advisor Wi Sung-lac maintained a cautious attitude in identifying the attacker, and the government prioritized on-site investigation and intelligence review. 

That caution itself was not wrong. In international disputes, identifying an attacker without evidence is dangerous. 

The question is why that caution disappeared when it came to Israel. 

Even when U.S. President Trump identified Iran, the South Korean government did not make a definitive statement. However, in the case of the Gaza aid flotilla incident, the president himself spoke out, bringing up issues of international law violations and the ICC arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu all at once. 

The government, which demanded fact-checking for the oil tanker incident, showed anger before fact-checking for Israel. 

Ultimately, the question converges into one: What is common sense for President Lee Jae-myung? 

Is it a standard reached after verifying the facts, or is it a justification applied retroactively after pre-determining anger? 

The presumption of innocence cannot be chosen.

This leads to another unavoidable question. 

President Lee spoke of "common sense" to Israel, but he himself is also a party to criminal proceedings. In the case of the Public Official Election Act, the Supreme Court overturned a lower court's acquittal and remanded the case for retrial with a guilty verdict. He is also indicted on charges including bribery of a third party in the alleged North Korean currency smuggling case involving Ssangbangwool. 

Does that mean we can definitively call President Lee a "criminal" now? The answer is no. The principle of presumption of innocence must apply until a final judgment is rendered. 

Precisely because of this, President Lee should not be referring to foreign leaders as criminals based solely on the stage of an arrest warrant. 

It is true that the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. However, an arrest warrant is not a conviction of guilt. It is merely a step in the judicial process for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. 

The same principle should apply to domestic politics. 

President Lee Jae-myung and the Democratic Party of Korea have long characterized the December 12th emergency martial law as "insurrection" and have referred to former President Yoon Suk-yeol as the "leader of the insurrection" and those involved as "insurrectionists" or "insurrectionary forces." 

However, insurrection is a crime that is finally judged through a final verdict in a criminal trial. 

Even if former President Yoon Suk-yeol has been found guilty in the first trial for charges of leading an insurrection and is undergoing an appeal, before a final judgment, the precise term is "defendant in an insurrection case" or "defendant appealing a first-instance guilty verdict." 

President Lee Jae-myung and the Democratic Party of Korea have already used pre-conviction labels as if they were "common sense" in domestic politics. If so, then these remarks towards Israel are not an isolated incident, but rather a scene where the political language they are accustomed to has spread to the diplomatic arena. 

A president is not a spokesperson for activists. A president is the ultimate responsible person for the nation. While activists can be driven by conviction, the nation must be driven by legal principles and national interests. 

Activists may try to break through blockades, but the nation should not package the results with emotion. 

If President Lee Jae-myung cannot be called a criminal before a final judgment, then he too should not call others criminals before a final judgment. If former President Yoon Suk-yeol cannot be definitively called an insurrectionist before a final judgment, then Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu should not be definitively called a war criminal based solely on the arrest warrant stage. 

The rule of law is not a courtesy extended only to one's allies. The rule of law is applying the same standard even to one's most uncomfortable opponents. 

Common sense should be a standard for verifying one's own language before being a word directed at others. 

The moment selective anger precedes verification, common sense becomes the emotion of power, not the language of the rule of law. 

Before speaking of common sense to Israel, the president's own language must first stand on the common sense of the rule of law.