Prosecution Grills Pastor Who Gave Dior Bag to First Lady

Anchor: The prosecution is questioning the man who secretly filmed himself giving a luxury Dior handbag to First Lady Kim Keon-hee a few months after President Yoon Suk Yeol’s inauguration in 2022. Korean American pastor Choi Jae-young appeared at the prosecutors’ office on Monday morning for questioning on charges of violation of the anti-graft law.
Kim Bum-soo has more. 

Report: Appearing at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office Monday morning, Korean American pastor Choi Jae-young claimed that his actions were public-interest journalism.

[Sound bite: Pastor Choi Jae-young (Korean-English)]

“The true nature of this is not whether she received a Dior bag or a Chanel skincare gift set. This is about First Lady Kim Keon-hee’s diversion of the presidential authority to her and dualizing and privatizing it for her… ”  

Choi gave a luxury handbag, worth three-million won, or about two-thousand-200 dollars, to First Lady Kim Keon-hee in September 2022.

Using a hidden camera embedded in his wristwatch, Choi filmed his meeting with Kim at her private office. He provided the footage to Voice of Seoul, an internet media outlet, which reportedly paid for the bag and published the video, sparking debate about whether it was entrapment journalism. 

Prosecutors are seeking to find out Choi’s intentions for providing the handbag to the first lady, and whether his motives were related to the president’s official duties, which will determine whether there was a violation of the nation’s anti-graft law.  

The prosecution plans to summon next week the head of Voice of Seoul, who filed a complaint against the presidential couple on charges of anti-graft law violations. 

In a press conference last week, President Yoon Suk Yeol apologized to the public for what he called the “less-than-wise behavior” of his wife.

In an interview with KBS in February, Yoon characterized the incident as a political setup ahead of the general elections in April, saying that the problem was that the first lady was unable to cold-heartedly reject the gift. 

The main opposition is also calling for another investigation into the first lady’s alleged involvement in a stock-price manipulation scandal. 

The ruling camp says that she was already cleared of suspicions of her involvement in market manipulation through exhaustive investigations by the previous government.

Kim Bum-soo, KBS World Radio News.