Who is Kim Keon-hee, described as South Korea’s ‘Lady Macbeth’?

Just days after South Korea’s President Yoon Suk-yeol’s failed martial law order, memes and parody posts suggesting it had been carried out to protect his wife, Kim Keon-hee, began to circulate on social media.

According to a report that appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP) on December 12, one of the memes that went viral on social media platforms in South Korea read: “Yoon, the greatest lover who declared martial law for his wife.” Others have appeared comparing Kim to Lady Macbeth and Marie Antoinette.

Opposition figures have been calling for an investigation into the first lady of South Korea, who is 52, for alleged offences including stock manipulation and corruption.

In South Korea’s April parliamentary elections, opposition parties including the Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) defeated Yoon’s People Power Party (PPP) and took control of the National Assembly. Since then, the opposition has passed three separate bills to establish a special prosecutor to investigate the first lady, all of which Yoon has vetoed.

While the exact reason that Yoon, who has now been impeached, chose to impose martial law in the country on December 3 remains unclear, but some critics of his government and opposition leaders have suggested it was to help his wife. 

“Lady Kim Keon-hee is Yoon’s mental sovereign,” Boo Seung-chan, an opposition member of the National Assembly of South Korea and part of the DPK, told SCMP’s reporters.

“They had been preparing this decree for months, but Yoon acted hastily as the opposition advanced another special probe bill targeting his wife,” Boo added.

On December 14, the National Assembly voted to impeach Yoon, and he has been suspended from his duties. Prime Minister Han Duck-soo has been appointed as South Korea’s acting president until the country’s Constitutional Court reviews Yoon’s impeachment.

It is as yet unknown if a fourth attempt to pass a bill to investigate the first lady will be made, or if Han would approve it should it also pass successfully through parliament.

So who is Kim Keon-hee, and is the president’s wife really to blame for South Korea’s political troubles?

Who is Kim Keon-hee?

South Korea’s first lady was born in September 1972 in the country’s Gyeonggi Province as Kim Myeong-sin – a name she changed in 2008 to Kim Keon-hee.

She graduated from Kyonggi University with an arts degree. She later established her own art exhibition company called Covana Contents in 2009 before she married Yoon in 2012.

While the couple have no children, they own around six dogs and five cats, according to local media reports.

Kim is an animal rights advocate and has vowed to end dog meat consumption in the country before her husband’s tenure as president ends.

The first lady has also caught the attention of fashion admirers around the world for her choice of outfits at important national and international summits and meetings.

At the NATO Summit in Spain in 2022, South Korean newspapers called her a “fashionista” for her outfit choices, which included a white cocktail dress and a black-and-white patterned suit she paired with a black belt.

What has Kim Keon-hee been accused of?

More than her glamorous wardrobe, her art business and her animal rights work, scandals are what have propelled Kim into the limelight. Here are some of the highlights.

Making false claims on her CV

In 2021, a year before Yoon became president, Kim was accused of falsifying her academic credentials while applying for teaching jobs in the past.

According to a report in the Korea JoongAng Daily, Kim applied for a job with the country’s University of Suwon in 2007. She claimed to have worked as the director of the Korea Association of Game Industry (K-Games) since 2002. But K-Games was established in 2004, and Kim had never worked for it.

She also claimed she had studied at New York University in 2006. But the programme where she claimed to have been registered was only available to MBA students already at the university, and Kim was not a student there.

In 2013, she sent another resume to Anyang University, a private institution in South Korea, claiming she was a recipient of a 2004 Seoul International Cartoon & Animation Festival prize. But the awards ceremony, sponsored by the country’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, had no record of her having won an award.

“I committed wrongdoings while trying to balance my career and studies,” Kim told a local press conference in 2021 when the accusations came to light, adding that her mistakes had put her husband’s People Power Party’s presidential candidature “in a difficult position”.

Manipulating share prices

Shortly before Yoon took office as the country’s president in May 2022, the opposition Democratic Party accused Kim and her mother of manipulating the stock price of auto dealership Deutsch Motors, and making 2.3 billion won ($1.68m) as a result.

The first lady was, however, cleared of those charges in October this year, when the anti-corruption division of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office found that while her share dealing account had been used in the incident, Kim had been unaware of the manipulation herself.

Breaking anti-corruption laws

The Kim scandal that attracted the most global headlines occurred when a video of her accepting a $2,200 Christian Dior handbag at her company’s Seoul office in November 2022 came to light and opposition leaders accused her of breaking South Korean anti-corruption laws.

Kim had been presented with the gift by a Korean-American pastor who claimed to have posed as a man seeking to buy influence with the president. He said he secretly filmed her accepting it in a sting operation to prove she was corrupt.

In October this year, South Korean prosecutors said they would not pursue charges under anti-corruption laws against Kim.

‘Manipulating’ her husband and ‘inappropriate’ remarks

Adding to the mounting controversies, last week, a documentary titled First Lady premiered in Seoul and included recorded phone conversations between Kim and investigative journalist Lee Myung-soo from the Voice of Seoul, revealing the first lady’s claims of influence over her husband.

In one of the conversations with the journalist, Kim allegedly states: “I don’t think Yoon Suk-yeol is really the president. That fool is just a puppet.” She asks the journalist: “Why do you like women so much?” before declaring that she can read his palm lines to predict his “luck with women”. She then tells him that his “sexual power is strong” and that he is “popular with the ladies”.

How have the scandals impacted Yoon and South Korea?

Yoon, who was prosecutor general of South Korea from 2019 to 2021 before he became president, has stuck by his wife. According to an article in the British newspaper The Times, he told the press that his wife “has been suffering a lot” because of his political career. He has also claimed that the first lady has been “demonised” by the media.

Ramon Pacheco Pardo, a Korea expert at King’s College London, said it is logical for Yoon to try to defend Kim, given their seemingly “very strong” relationship.

“But by spending so much time defending her actions and fending off attempts by the National Assembly to launch an investigation of her, Yoon lost support among the South Korean population,” Pardo told Al Jazeera.

After his failed martial law bid, Yoon’s approval rating fell to just 11 percent, according to a Gallup Korea poll. The rating marks his lowest one since becoming president in 2022.

According to Pardo, the controversy surrounding Kim Keon-hee is one of the main factors behind Yoon Suk-yeol’s political downfall.

“They [the controversies] have drained support from Yoon, strained relations between the now-suspended president and the opposition, and forced him to spend too much time defending her actions rather than governing the country,” Pardo said.

But he added that Kim’s unpopularity will not have much bearing on Yoon’s political future.

“At this stage, the Constitutional Court has to decide whether to uphold the National Assembly’s impeachment or not,” Pardo said. “And this decision relates to his decision to impose martial law, not to his wife’s unpopularity.”

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