Minor Reform Party presidential candidate Lee Jun-seok has continued to defend a controversial comment he made during a televised debate earlier this week depicting a violent act against a woman, insisting his remarks were not misogynistic.

Lee told reporters in Seoul on Thursday that the explicit statement he made during Tuesday’s debate was not his own, but rather a toned-down version of a post that Lee Dong-ho, the son of Democratic Party candidate Lee Jae-myung, had uploaded to an online community.

He said the original language in the post was so vulgar and obscene that there were limits on how much it could be filtered, adding that he only rehashed the post and posed the question to invite scrutiny on the Democratic Party’s candidate.

Although Lee Jun-seok apologized again for making people feel uncomfortable, he argued that looking critically at a presidential candidate’s family is not a matter of privacy, but an extension of public responsibility.

The minor party candidate, who has come under harsh criticism for his comments and has been called a misogynist, warned that anyone who spreads false information about him will face strong civil action.