As reports surfaced that most Seoul Paejae High School students who sparked controversy by chanting slogans disparaging the May 18 Democratization Movement slept through civic education, Lee Jae-o, chair of the board at the Korea Democracy Foundation, who was the lecturer at the time, moved to offer an explanation.
Appearing on CBS Radio's "Park Seong-tae's News Show" on the morning of the 23rd, Lee said in response to a question about the situation at the time, "It's completely wrong."
Earlier, on the 21st, the student newspaper "Clover" reported through interviews with Paejae High School students that most students slept during Lee's democracy education lecture.
According to the report, a Paejae High School student identified as A said, "Of the more than 30 students in the class, only two, including me, were awake," adding, "Chair Lee Jae-o said before the lecture, 'It's okay to sleep, but those who will listen should listen for sure.' Most students who heard that started to sleep."
The student also added that there was nothing about hate speech in Lee's lecture content and that "the lecture was done halfheartedly, and the students did not have a serious sense of crisis."
In response, Lee explained his remark before starting the lecture, "Those who will sleep, sleep; those who will listen, listen well," saying, "If I had said, 'Don't sleep and listen carefully,' students might have thought I was an old-fashioned nag," and that he phrased it as, "Some will sleep, but those who will listen, listen hard," so that students would think, "We shouldn't sleep."
He added, "The audience was about 400 first-year students," and countered, "There were far more students not sleeping than sleeping."
Lee also said, "The lecture topic was what contribution the democratization movement made in the development of Korean democracy," and explained, "Things like hate speech or baseball were not the requested topic of my lecture."
Lee, who was involved in the student movement during the Park Chung-hee government and served prison time, later worked as a Korean language teacher at a middle school. He gave a special lecture at Paejae High School on the 14th.