South Korea’s Yoon faces pressure to apologise over wife’s Dior bag scandal as polls loom
- First lady Kim Keon-hee was filmed accepting a luxury bag when the spouses of officials are barred from receiving gifts worth above US$750 in a single sitting
- Officials from the ruling party accuse the US pastor who gave her the bag of entrapment, but analysts say Yoon may just have to bite the bullet amid public anger
The episode came to light after a video emerged online showing Kim Keon-hee receiving a US$2,200 Dior handbag by a US pastor, who said he had secretly filmed the incident to prove that she was corrupt.
Yoon has been hoping the storm would blow over but observers say he can no longer afford to ignore the issue, which comes on the back of rising voter frustration over the poor economy.
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“This is the first time the first lady has been caught on camera accepting a luxury gift amid rampant allegations about her wrongdoing,” said Choi Jin, head of the think tank Institute of Presidential Leadership in Seoul.
Kim issued a public apology in 2021 for inflating her academic credentials and job resume when her husband was on a campaign trail. She has also been dogged by allegations of tax evasion, stock price manipulation and consulting fortune-tellers.
“This is a bitter pill to swallow for President Yoon, but he would have no alternatives but to publicly apologise over the incident which has riled up the people,” Choi added.
In an opinion poll published by YTN TV on Wednesday, 69 per cent of 1,000 respondents agreed that Yoon should clarify his position on issues surrounding his wife.
South Korea prohibits the spouse of a public official from receiving gifts worth more than 1 million won (US$750) in a single sitting, or items that exceed 3 million won in value over a one-year period. Those who violate the anti-corruption law face a maximum sentence of three years in prison and 30 million won in fines.
Caught on video
In November last year, video shot in 2022 by South Korea-born American pastor Choi Jae-young appeared on the left-leaning Voice of Seoul channel on YouTube.
It shows the pastor meeting Kim in the Seoul office of her exhibition planning firm, Covana Contents, and handing her the bag, sparking a mild criticism from Kim. The two are acquainted, given the long-standing ties between their families.
“Don’t keep doing this. Never buy things as expensive as this,” she chides him in the video, which Choi filmed using a camera embedded in his smartwatch.
The pastor claimed through recent press interviews that the first lady had agreed to meet him after he sent her a picture of the handbag with a message that he would arrive at her company with the gift. He dismissed suggestions that Kim might have received it “in a moment of bewilderment”.
Choi said he decided to film the video to collect evidence of Kim’s supposed corruption after he witnessed her talking on the phone to an unknown person to discuss personnel appointments in key government posts, such as the country’s financial watchdog, when they first met in June 2022.
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Officials from Yoon’s ruling People Power Party (PPP) accused Choi of taking advantage of his old ties with the Kim family to approach and entrap her, describing her as a victim of a hidden-camera plot.
A spokesman at the presidential office told local media that gifts received by Yoon and his wife belonged to the state and were automatically put in storage, and hence Kim was not breaching the law as she had not kept the bag.
“You apologise only when you’ve done something illegal or wrong,” Yoon’s close aide Lee Chul-gyu told journalists on Tuesday. Lee added that returning the handbag to Choi would also constitute embezzlement from the state coffers.
Some PPP lawmakers pushed for a clear apology from either Yoon’s office or directly from Kim herself, while others expressed concerns that offering an apology could be exploited by opposition lawmakers in the lead-up to the elections.
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Conspicuously, the scandal opened a public rift for the first time between Yoon and his former right-hand man and ex-justice minister Han Dong-hoon, who was in December appointed as the PPP’s interim head and billed as the “future power-holder”.
Han earlier this week said he had defied calls from within the presidential office to step down as interim leader after suggesting the situation could have been better handled, although both men appeared to have patched up their feud after taking a train ride together following a visit to a southern city on Tuesday.
Jung Suk-koo, a former executive editor of the independent Hankyoreh newspaper, told This Week in Asia that the incident would shake voter confidence in Yoon.
“This episode reveals the country’s democracy has not matured enough and the integrity of officialdom falls far short of public expectations. Voters are likely to express their frustrations at the ballot box,” he said.
However, Eom Kyeong-young, director of the Zeitgeist Institute, said while Yoon was taking a hit, the PPP was ultimately likely to be unscathed in the polls.
“This scandal is preventing voters’ support for the ruling party from further rising in the lead-up to the elections” but the ruling party was still expected to win a majority as the opposition was even less popular, Eom said.
