Covid infections are on the rise and hospitals are filling up, but all of last week in Seoul, the talk was not about the coronavirus, but about a mother of two.
Cho Dong-youn, a 39-year-old former army major, was named co-chair of ruling center-left Minjoo on Tuesday but resigned three days later. Her political future collapsed on charges of having a son with another man in 2011 while married to her first husband, to whom she did not tell the child was not his (she is now in her second marriage).
Kang Yong-seok, a well-known right-wing YouTuber and former Conservative lawmaker, first broke the allegation on the day Cho made her political debut. When the minjoo threatened to sue him for defamation, the conservative daily Chosun Ilbo joined the fray and published evidence that Cho’s first husband had commissioned a DNA test to determine the child’s paternity. According to the newspaper, he also obtained a court ruling in 2014 that he is not the father.
A married woman who has an illegitimate child and lies to her husband that it is his. If that’s true, it sounds like the plot of a daytime soap opera, but is it worth talking about for the whole nation?
Yes, it’s in Korea, and the discovery has generated a thousand thought pieces and comments on social media, not to mention posts on tons of online discussion forums. Obviously, infidelity is not a private matter for many Koreans.
Note that in June a story made the rounds that a male manager and a young woman had an affair at Kookmin Bank, one of Korea’s four largest banks. The woman apparently had a fiancé who discovered her infidelity and sent the evidence to all of her friends and acquaintances.
In the same month, another scandal erupted after a single picture of two women and a man was posted on the internet. It was alleged that two Samsung Electronics employees (a man and a woman) committed adultery and that his wife confronted them in the lobby of the company building.
This second incident turned out to be untrue, but it was yet another sign that this country is obsessed with other people’s private lives. Just think of the incredible brouhaha that erupted in 2017 when famous director Hong Sang-soo and actress Kim Min-hee declared love. Hong was (and is) a married man, and the backlash against the couple was quick. Since then, Kim has not appeared in a single mainstream film or television drama production.
Anger over adultery betrays a fear of the fragility of marriage
There’s a celebrity living in my Seoul area – he’s an Indy singer who was best known for appearing on a TV variety show a few years ago. I often see him in our neighborhood bar when I go home. But recently I saw him walking his dogs
With all of these little and big details posted on myriad blogs and even news websites, it is hard not to learn a few things about all sorts of unfaithful Koreans, famous or not, even if one has no interest in them.
The case against Cho is more complex, however. The Minjoo recruited them in a political stunt – Korean parties often offer prominent jobs to political newbies with impressive résumés to convey an image that they care about talent. Cho, a Harvard-trained military officer, was perfect for fueling the Minjoo’s lackluster fortune ahead of next spring’s presidential election.
(The party’s presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung is tied with conservative counterpart Yoon Seok-youl in the latest Gallup-Korea poll.)
Kang tried to harm Cho, and with it the Minjoo Party, and he succeeded, but people wonder if it is right to feed politicians’ private lives for public debate.
A well-known progressive lawyer Kwon Gyeong-ae complained on Facebook: “The constitution guarantees freedom of private life. Even public figures are not required to endure a public trial in which their private life is exposed to the last thread without reference to public affairs. Even politicians have the right not to harm their private life. “
The right-wing joongang Ilbo, of course, has a different attitude. It published an opinion from its own columnist that “the co-chair of the ruling party is a politically important position in an election campaign and it is not appropriate for an unethical criminal to hold it”.
Author O Byeong-sang continued, “The birth of an illegitimate child happened before 2015 when the charges of adultery were ruled unconstitutional. That means that when it happened, Cho was a criminal. ”
Criminal or not, Cho’s story and the Minjoo’s apparent ignorance prior to being appointed to a prominent position has been heavily criticized across the country. On a largely pro-Minjoo page, favored by married women, a popular post said, “This heralds the end of the minjoo.”
Another forum known for its masculine sympathies is dominated by the view that Cho deliberately cheated on her husband so that he would financially support her and her child conceived by another man.
(One piece of evidence is an alleged screen shot of the first husband’s bank statement, which appears to show that Cho withdrew large sums of money from his account even after the divorce – don’t ask me how this information is being spread to the public.)
Certainly there is something hypocritical and perhaps even sexist about the attacks on Cho. YouTuber Kang Yong-seok, married himself, was involved in an adultery scandal with a popular blogger six years ago. He clearly doesn’t see anything wrong with what he’s done calling other people about infidelity. Talk about a saucepan that calls a kettle black.
On the other hand, Minjoo supporters smeared the wife of the conservative opposition candidate Yoon with allegations that she may have worked as a bar hostess in the past (they even went so far as to have her painted on a mural in front of his shop as an insult) . Now they are rushing to defend Cho, but it seems less a matter of believing the allegations against them than of protecting the party.
Indeed, given Koreans’ low confidence in politics and politicians, there is actually quite a bit to be said about keeping Cho out of politics. If she could lie about something as big as the father of her own child, what more could she lie about if she had power? Is this really just a private matter or an indication of their personal character and lack of integrity?
For many Koreans, the latter is more plausible.
Just last year, a Korean friend of mine discovered that her Turkish friend, a Samsung manager, was cheating on her. She wondered if she should inform the company.
My friend, like many Koreans, believed that her boyfriend’s private indiscretion should be taken into account by his superiors when assessing his suitability as an employee. There is a Chinese proverb that is quoted a lot even in Korea: susin jega chiguk pyeongcheonha 修身 齐家 治国 平 天下. Take care of your body, bring order to the household, rule a country and only then can the world be pacified.
According to conventional Korean thinking, personal behavior is a reflection of one’s ability to do bigger things in life. Cho obviously didn’t have her household in order and is therefore unsuitable for becoming a politician.
But there are always twists and turns, like in any K-drama. On Sunday, Cho’s lawyer announced that she had lied to her then-husband about the paternity of her son because the child had been conceived as a result of rape:
“Former chairwoman in August 2010 [of the Minjoo election campaign] Cho Dong-youn experienced an unwanted pregnancy due to terrible sexual assault by a third party. […] By then, Cho’s marriage was practically over, but she gave birth out of a religious belief that she could not extinguish a life within herself and decided to take responsibility for raising the child alone. “
I will definitely continue to follow how this story unfolds.
Cover picture: Cho Dong-youn, former co-chair of the Minjoo election campaign, who resigned after exposing herself to allegations of having a child out of wedlock (source: namu.wiki)
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