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.
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. It became national gossip.
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 such small and big details being routinely 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 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 who became a university professor, 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.)
Right-wing YouTuber Kang and Conservatives tried to harm Cho, and with it the Minjoo Party, and they have succeeded, but people wonder whether it is right to make the private lives of politicians a breeding ground for public debate.
A well-known progressive lawyer Kwon Gyeong-ae lamented on Facebook: “The constitution guarantees freedom of privacy. Even public figures are not obliged to endure a public process in which their private life is exposed to the last thread with no connection to public affairs. Politicians have the right not to have their private life violated. “
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 occurred before 2015 when the charges of adultery were ruled unconstitutional. This 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 have been heavily criticized across the country. Even on a largely pro-Minjoo site preferred by married women, a popular post said, “This will usher in the end of minjoo.”
In forums known for masculinist sympathies, the prevailing view is that Cho deliberately cheated on her husband so that he would financially support her and her child conceived by another man.
Certainly there is something hypocritical and perhaps even sexist about the attacks on Cho. Kang Yong-seok, who revealed her past, is herself married and was embroiled in an adultery scandal with a popular blogger six years ago. Despite scathing evidence and overwhelming moral condemnation, he continues a career that consists in part of calling other people out for infidelity. Talk about a saucepan that calls a kettle black.
On the other hand, many Minjoo supporters pollute the wife of the conservative opposition candidate Yoon with allegations that she may have worked as a bar hostess in the past. 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, it is legitimate to keep Cho out of politics. If she could lie about something as big as the father of her own child (no less to her then-husband), what else could and would she lie when she was in power? Is this really just a private matter or an indication of their personal character and lack of integrity?
Many Koreans are inclined to believe the latter.
Just last year, a Korean friend of mine discovered that her Turkish boyfriend, a junior executive at Samsung Electronics, was cheating on her. She wondered if she should inform the company.
My friend felt that her boyfriend’s bosses should take his private indiscretion into account when assessing his suitability as an employee. There is a sentence from the classical Chinese text Daxue 大學 (The Great Learning) that is widespread even in Korea: susin jega chiguk pyeongcheonha 修身 齐家 治国 平 天下. First cultivate the body, then put the household in order, only then strive to rule your country, and finally you can pacify the world.
Personal behavior reflects the ability to do bigger things in life, according to conventional Korean thinking. From this point of view, Cho clearly had her budget out of 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 unspeakable sexual violence by third parties. […] By then, Cho’s marriage was practically over, but she gave birth on the religious belief that she should not extinguish life 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 on charges of having an illegitimate child (source: namu.wiki)
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