Novelist Lee Oi-soo, dubbed “Twitter president,” is in hot water over Twitter remarks on Tuesday, which fired back at netizens who expressed disappointment over his perceived “soft spot” for conservative presidential candidate Park Geun-hye.

The celebrated writer on Tuesday afternoon wrote on his Twitter account: “I warn you, petty Internet users. I don’t care what you call me with your nasty vocabulary. But what you must bear in mind is that with just my single tweet, you can lose hundreds of thousands of votes at once. I have already thought of several lines.”

Lee was apparently responding to tweets complaining about his recent meeting with Park. 

When Park visited Lee’s studio and gallery in Hwacheon, Gangwon Province, on Sept. 25, he reportedly sat down with her for an hour, praising her for “taking a big step” to publicly apologize for his father’s authoritarian regime in the ‘60s and ‘70s. News outlets said the atmosphere was warm and amicable.

As news of the meeting spread, some expressed concerns that Lee’s actions could be seen as encouragement to the conservative candidate, although the author later explained that the welcome was hospitality for guests and that he will provide the same welcome to anyone who visits him.

After the initial tweet on Tuesday, Lee posted another invective. When a Twitter user wrote, “You have let me down. You write as if you have authority,” Lee replied, “Get lost. Don’t be an imbecile, you (who has) yet to be hatched.”

“I understand where his frustration comes from. He is sick and tired of people distorting his intention,” a user said. “But as a respected person he should have watched how he vents those feelings,” the user added.

“I agree with what Lee says most of the times but in this case he is wrong. He is giving a good excuse for the opponents to blast about his attitude while degrading himself and his followers,” another user said.

Lee has 1.45 million Twitter followers and the number of those who regularly read tweets is assumed to be double that figure.

By Bae Ji-sook
(baejisook@heraldcorp.com)