Dog and Pig

Origin

On the evening of July 7, 2016, at a restaurant in Seoul's Jongno district, Na Hyang-wook, then the Ministry of Education's Director of Policy Planning, had dinner with the ministry's spokesperson and public relations officer, the Kyunghyang Shinmun's policy and society editor, and reporters covering the ministry. There he said, "The people are dogs and pigs. We need to solidify the class system." The Kyunghyang Shinmun, present at the table, reported it, and it became a national scandal (Namuwiki, "The Na Hyang-wook 'dogs and pigs' remark").

The fallout was not only about how crude the remark was. Na had graduated from Yonsei University, passed the higher civil service exam at 23, served at the presidential office and at international organizations, and risen to Director of Policy Planning at the Ministry of Education. That a civil servant occupying a seat where education policy is designed said the class system should be entrenched was the core of the affair.

Spread

Right after the report, "dogs and pigs" stopped being one man's slip and became a word for a relationship. In the original sentence it was what the powerful called everyone else, and its later uses split along that line. One is to quote the powerful's gaze back at them when pointing out contempt for the public; the other is the public applying it to itself — "we are the dogs and pigs." The second use spread further, turning the phrase into an idiom of powerlessness.

What followed extended the meme's life. Na contested his dismissal in court, won his administrative suit in 2018 and was reinstated, returning at a reduced rank to the National Education Training Institute under the ministry (Kyunghyang Shinmun, August 10, 2018). The fact that the man who said it came back was itself cited as grounds reinforcing the self-deprecating use.