Did former South Korean President Moon Jae-in say that economics shouldn't be left to experts? No, that's not true: Moon said that economics shouldn't be the domain of only experts, while recommending a book about economics written for laypeople to encourage his followers to become better informed.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) where it was published on TikTok by @togota1233 on June 5, 2023, with the author saying:
Moon's untimely nonsense has been in the news these days... It's befitting of someone who destroyed the economy that Korea built up for 40 years in a short period of time.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Wed Jul 26 14:58:30 2023 UTC)
The post consists of a video clip taken from a right-wing YouTube channel in which the channel's host presents a headline taken from an article in the conservative daily Chosun Ilbo reading:
Moon: If we leave economics to experts, we will be swept up by the ruling ideology.
The host mockingly claims that Moon may not have relied on experts to formulate his policies and appointed non-experts to his cabinet. He makes a comparison:
It's like saying treating sick people shouldn't be left to doctors.
But this falsely represents what former President Moon actually said about economic expertise. Moon said that economics should not be the domain of only experts, in a Facebook post uploaded in June.
He was in the middle of recommending a book, which he often does on social media. On this occasion, he recommended Edible Economics a 2022 book by South Korean economist Ha-Joon Chang, a book that makes dense economic concepts more digestible to the public by explaining them through stories about food. In the post, he encouraged his followers to obtain an understanding of economics in order to become better informed voters.
