The “Dior bag scandal”: the new controversy that complicates the first lady of South Korea

This Tuesday, the South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol met with the acting head of People Power Party (PPP) , Han Dong-hoon in an attempt to repair their relationship after a disagreement over how to respond to allegations related to the first lady and the party’s nominations for the upcoming general election.

There first lady of South Korea, Kim Keon-hee, has faced harsh criticism from the ruling PPP – a conservative group that holds the presidency of South Korea and is the second force in the National Assembly – for accepting a Dior bag from a shepherd in 2022.

Han Dong-hoon said the first lady’s handbag controversy “may be a matter of public concern” , as reported by the Korea Times last Saturday. A few days later, Han confirmed to South Korean reporters that the presidential office had asked him to leave his post, although he rejected the resignation request.

The first lady has been in the eye of the storm since November last year, after the liberal YouTube news channel Voice of Seoul published that Kim Keon-hee received a Dior bag worth around 3 million won ($2,250) from a Korean-American pastor in September 2022. The pastor secretly filmed the exchange using a camera built into his watch.

While the liberal channel accused Kim of corruption , Yoon’s office refuted the claim and instead said it was a premeditated spy camera. “Basically this was a planned setup using a spy camera. However, there were several irregularities in the processing of these files,” the PPP leader told the media last Thursday.

According to Anti-corruption law in South Korea , it is illegal for public officials and their spouses to receive gifts worth more than 1 million South Korean won ($750) in one go or a total of 3 million won in a fiscal year . Neither Kim nor her husband, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, have yet commented on the scandal.

Last year, after the video was released, a civic group presented a complaint before the South Korean Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission, requesting a investigation into Kim for alleged violation of anti-corruption laws. Last Thursday, the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission said it was investigating according to due process. “We treat all reported cases fairly and in accordance with the law and principles,” the agency said in a press release.

The Dior bag scandal, which set fire to the ruling party in South Korea, is added to the vast Dior bag scandal. save that Kim Keon-hee has accusations against him. There businesswoman, academic and first lady of South Korea 51 years old, has already been involved in controversies related to plagiarism, false diplomas, tax evasion and stock market corruption.

In February 2023, the businesswoman was accused of manipulate stock prices of Deutsch Motors Inc., a major distributor of BMW automobiles in South Korea, between 2009 and 2012. The court handling the Deutsch Motors market manipulation case found that several accounts by Kim Keon-hee, mentioned repeatedly in the judgment, were “used to manipulate market prices”.

Last December, Korea’s National Assembly passed a bill to launch a special prosecutorial investigation into the first lady’s alleged involvement in stock market manipulation. The proposal – made by the Democratic Party of Korea, the first majority in the Assembly – received the unanimous support of the 180 members present. However, members of the ruling party opposed the motion, saying it was an electoral strategy. general elections of the National Assembly next April 10.

The presidential office then announced that President Yoon Suk-yeol would use his the power of veto “as soon as the bill arrives.” But because the veto carries significant political weight, the announcement quickly became another controversy in the run-up to April’s general election.

In September 2022, the academic was accused by a group of professors from the National Pan-Academic Verification Group for checking alleged plagiarism for having plagiarized his doctoral thesis and other published articles . However, she was exonerated after an eight-month investigation by Kookmin University, which previously noted that although Kim Keon-hee’s work was “deficient” and “inappropriate by today’s standards”, it did not warrant not bad treatment. by the Korea Times.

The group claimed at the time that all of Kim’s academic work was “unquestionably involved in plagiarism” and all of this violated basic academic standards. According to the results, a total of 220 of the 860 sentences in his doctoral thesis – which he wrote while attending Kookmin University’s Graduate School of Technology Design in 2008 – were copied and pasted without citing the sources originals.

In 2021, the current first lady was accused of using falsified professional credentials on resumes which he submitted to apply for teaching positions at Suwon University in 2007 and Anyang University in 2013, both in Gyeonggi Province. After that he asked televised apology for “exaggerating” his career to get the jobs.

In her public apology delivered at the PPP headquarters in Yeouido, west of Seoul, the businesswoman expressed regret for giving negative publicity to her husband. “I did some bad things while trying to balance my career and studies,” Kim admitted at the conference. “I exaggerated my past experiences to stand out and now I remember it with shame,” she declared, as published on this occasion by the South Korean media Korea JoongAng Daily.

The controversy surrounding falsified accreditations was such that in 2022, the Democratic Party of Korea – the government’s main opponent – called for a “Kim Keon-hee prevention law” that it would crack down on those who falsify their professional qualifications, the Korea Herald reported.

The current Dior bag scandal is considered detrimental to the ruling party ahead of legislative elections in April, where they hope to unseat the Democratic Party of Korea and secure a majority of votes in the National Assembly. Thus, the ruling party in South Korea, the People Power Party (PPP) intensifies its investigation into the first lady in an attempt to respond to public discontent in the run-up to the next general elections, particularly given the silence of the presidential couple about it.

The situation has produced serious Divisions between the party members decision, but also between the PPP itself and the President Yoon . Some lawmakers are calling on the first lady to apologize, while Yoon’s conservative supporters have called the video a political stunt ahead of the upcoming legislative election. Kim Kyung-yul, a member of the party’s interim leadership, even compared Kim Keon-hee to the luxurious queen of France. Marie Antoinette famous for spending excessive amounts on clothing.

Following comparisons to Queen Marie Antoinette, local media said Yoon was furious and wanted. dismiss party leader Han Dong-hoon marking at least a brief rift between the president and an official widely seen as a protégé and close associate.

In a survey released this week by South Korean channel YTN, 69% of respondents said that Yoon must explain his position regarding the scandal involving the first lady. Another survey conducted in December by South Korean media outlet News Tomato showed that 53% of respondents believe that Kim acted inappropriately while 27% said they fell into a trap to embarrass him.

“The general public thinks, ‘Okay, maybe it’s a trap, but why did he take it (the bag) anyway? “said Shin Yul, professor of political science at Myongji University.

From the office of the South Korean president, it is claimed that There’s no need to apologize for this incident, as it was considered that the gift received by Kim was not received personally but rather by the state, according to local newspaper The Hankyoreh.