The Reform Party has released its own poll findings amid a controversy over whether an idol group member's use of the phrase "museopno" was an expression associated with "Ilbe," the far-right online community Ilgan Best Storage. According to the survey, only 17% of respondents viewed the phrase as an Ilbe-style expression.
In the survey conducted on the 6th and 7th of this month by the Reform Research Institute, the party's think tank, among 500 men and women aged 18 and older nationwide (margin of error ±4.4 percentage points at a 95% confidence level), 55.8% of respondents said the phrase "museopno" "can be seen as a regional dialect." Those who answered "not sure" accounted for 27.5%, and those who said it "can be seen as an Ilbe-style expression" accounted for 16.7%.
Asked whether they were aware of the "museopno" controversy, 44.0% of respondents said they "know it well," 29.3% said they "do not know," and 26.6% said they "know it a little."
On the question of how they view labeling someone as having a particular political leaning based on their speech or expressions, "not appropriate" was the most common answer at 68.1%. This was followed by "not sure" (18.7%) and "appropriate" (13.2%).
Regarding the poll results, Reform Party leader Lee Jun-seok said on Facebook, "It means that a majority of the public reject the very frame of this controversy (stigmatization based on dialect)." He added, "The public sentiment read from the poll results is that political figures should not launch ideological attacks on entertainment figures for political purposes."
Earlier, after an idol group member from Geoje, South Gyeongsang Province, said "museopno," former Rebuilding Korea Party leader Cho Kuk posted on Facebook a way to distinguish between the Busan dialect and Ilbe-style expressions used on the online community considered to have a far-right leaning, escalating the issue into a political dispute.
