Presidential office says it’s not ‘tail-cutting’ even if First Lady passes buck to her subordinate[Editorial]

First Lady Kim Keon-hee walks after getting off Air Force One upon her arrival at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii, U.S., on July 8. Yonhap News Agency

On July 3, Mr. Yoo, an administrator at the presidential office, admitted that First Lady Kim Keon-hee received a luxury bag from Pastor Choi Jae-young on September 13, 2022, when he was questioned as a testifier by the prosecution, stating that “Kim instructed me to return it that night, but I forgot to do so.” In response to the criticism of “cutting off the tail,” Choi Ji-woo, a lawyer representing Kim, issued a press release on July 16, saying, “The Dior bag is currently stored in a completely unused state,” and that “cutting off the tail is absurd.” For eight months since the controversy over the luxury bag, Kim has not even said anything. If it is not a tail-cutting to pass the buck to her subordinate and get away with it, then what is it?

If there was an order from Kim to return the bag, it is reasonable to assume that it would have been released immediately after the video of Kim accepting the bag was revealed in November last year. It was an issue that put the Yoon Suk-yeol government into a corner ahead of the general election, and there would have been no reason to avoid revealing her order.

However, no one in the presidential office disclosed Kim's order to return the bag. Nor did she mention it when she sent five text messages to the ruling People’s Power party’s interim leader Han Dong-hoon earlier this year, asking him “whether she should apologize for the luxury bag.”

Kim said she learned that the bag was not returned after the video was released, but even after that, the presidential office did not contact Pastor Choi to return it. Instead, the presidential office responded that the bag was a “presidential record” that belonged to the state treasury and could not be returned. If Kim is right, the presidential office has been lying to the public all along.

It is not hard to guess what Kim's intention is when she talks about the “order to return the bag” after so long a time. As the spouse of a public official, she complied with the anti-graft law by ordering the valuables she received to be returned immediately, avoiding legal liability of the president and his wife. But it is too cowardly to pass the buck to a blameless subordinate. “It would be inappropriate to subpoena a sitting first lady,” Choi said, raising suspicions that Kim is trying to give the prosecution a guideline of “unable to subpoena.”

Prosecutors are said to be finalizing their investigation of Kim. It would be natural for the prosecution to summon Kim for questioning and raid the presidential office to secure the luxury bag. But instead, the prosecution has sent an official letter to the presidential office pleading for the submission of the luxury bag. It is so different from Prosecutor General Lee Won-seok's words, "There are no exceptions, preferential treatment, or sanctuary before the law." Given the attitude of Kim and the prosecution, this is why public consensus is growing that Kim's allegation should be revealed through a special counsel investigation.

※This article has undergone review by a professional translator after being translated by an AI translation tool.