Speaker 1: In two thousand eleven, nine Korean citizens were prosecuted for
Speaker 1: defamation of Tableau for participating in the online campaign against him.
Speaker 1: For most of the public, this put the doubts about
Speaker 1: Tableau to arrest, and the online forum Taijanyo went from
Speaker 1: being perceived as of maybe over zealous but overall righteous
Speaker 1: crusade of activists who wanted to expose fraud to looking
Speaker 1: like a cult like mob that was uninterested in facts.
Speaker 1: From the outside, it looked like Tableau had one. But
Speaker 1: it's not so simple. I mean, can you really say
Speaker 1: you've won if the other side is still fighting? Because yes,
Speaker 1: at its peak, Tijanio's membership was in the hundreds of thousands,
Speaker 1: and it never reached that again. But Taijanio never did
Speaker 1: go away. There are still thirty five thousand members on
Speaker 1: the forum, and people still to this day are posting religiously.
Speaker 1: And this is what I wanted to understand most. What
Speaker 1: is it that's kept tiging your going for years. We
Speaker 1: can theorize all we want, but it's hard to get
Speaker 1: a clear picture without talking to someone who's actually part
Speaker 1: of that group. So our producer Stephanie Karayuki and I
Speaker 1: set out to try to find someone from Tajano to
Speaker 1: tell us once and for all why they still believe
Speaker 1: the Tableau was lying. We started by tracking down Tijano's
Speaker 1: most notorious member, a man who wasn't just the star
Speaker 1: of the forum, but the person that the police were
Speaker 1: most interested in interrogating. A man who goes by the
Speaker 1: online handle what becomes a file? What signs my name?
Speaker 1: I can be, can be comfortable, I can writing on
Speaker 1: the worst past them. Yeah, blah bla from Vice and
Speaker 1: I Heart. I'm Dr Thomas and I'm Stephanie Terre. Easy.
Speaker 1: This is authentic episode six Tony Justice. Steph. You're here
Speaker 1: because we've been working pretty closely together to get a
Speaker 1: hold of someone from Tajano. But it's been really hard. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean I started the search with What Becomes because
Speaker 1: Officer Sah has spent months trying to track him down
Speaker 1: because he was considered the main driver of the campaign
Speaker 1: against Tablow and some of the posts he was making
Speaker 1: were advocating physical violence against Tablow and his family. Officers
Speaker 1: saw him as the worst guy, and then he used
Speaker 1: the worst guy, so of course we are focusing on him,
Speaker 1: right And What Becomes is also a big reason that
Speaker 1: things started getting really serious and the police investigations right
Speaker 1: because the cops figured out that he'd signed up for
Speaker 1: the site using a fake I D, which is legal
Speaker 1: in Korea. And when the cops reported that to Neighbor,
Speaker 1: which is the platform the tagno was on, Neighbor shut
Speaker 1: the whole thing down. So for a while it looked
Speaker 1: like the police were really on this guy's track and
Speaker 1: they were maybe about to put him away. I found
Speaker 1: his cell phone number after I saw Alan, and then
Speaker 1: I called him from Korea right and after Sa, he'd
Speaker 1: been working behind the scenes to track down what becomes
Speaker 1: his real name and address, and when he finally got him,
Speaker 1: so I realized what becomes was in the States. So
Speaker 1: he called them, wow, and did he pick up? Picked?
Speaker 1: What did he say? So, I asked you to Korea
Speaker 1: for interrogation to deny why I'm not the Korean citizen anymore.
Speaker 1: Since after SA couldn't get what becomes back to Korea,
Speaker 1: he thought, Okay, fine, I can go to him. I
Speaker 1: was quite excited to fright to the USA. Korea takes
Speaker 1: defamation extremely seriously, but in the United States it's not
Speaker 1: as serious of a crime, So that means that there
Speaker 1: was no way to extradite him. Officers even try to
Speaker 1: get interpoll involved, but they wouldn't touch it. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that was pretty much it right, Yeah, which is weird
Speaker 1: to think about because other Tashna members had gone to
Speaker 1: jail for posting about Tableau and Korea and the things
Speaker 1: that what Becomes had posted were just as egregious. But
Speaker 1: because he stayed in the States, he was safe and
Speaker 1: authorities couldn't even question him. If we had to him,
Speaker 1: you might get multi tayed. And why he just started
Speaker 1: hepen Yeah, now that I think of it, Officers is
Speaker 1: probably one of just a few people outside of TAJNYO
Speaker 1: that's ever been able to talk directly to what Becomes exactly.
Speaker 1: So officers couldn't question him. But was he able to
Speaker 1: get anything out of on the phone? Well not really,
Speaker 1: Officer said, told me what he knew, and he figured
Speaker 1: out that what becomes his real name is Unsucked Kim
Speaker 1: and that he was in Chicago. Huh. Yeah, So we
Speaker 1: know that Kim immigrated to the US with his wife
Speaker 1: and two daughters. We also know that he ran a
Speaker 1: small business while putting his kids through college. Eventually he
Speaker 1: became a U s citizen, and we also know that
Speaker 1: he would stay pretty active on these Korean forums, and
Speaker 1: that's how he joined tajan Yo as a forum manager
Speaker 1: almost twenty years later, when he was in his fiftiece. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and what's interesting about all this info is that half
Speaker 1: of it Kim put out there himself, and the rest
Speaker 1: was released in articles soon after investigation. And it's not
Speaker 1: exactly like Kim was super private about who he was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've read some of his posts from that time, and
Speaker 1: he's talking pretty openly about that he has daughters and
Speaker 1: that he lives in the United States. He never hid
Speaker 1: that exactly. All of this stuff you just said, I
Speaker 1: knew from reporting on this series, the stuff that you
Speaker 1: and I haven't talked about, And really, this is why
Speaker 1: I wanted to bring you on is because I never
Speaker 1: really got the full story about this. You went on
Speaker 1: this reporting trip right by yourself. How did that even start? Well,
Speaker 1: I've been reading everything I could about him, and I
Speaker 1: had his Korean name, but I also knew that he
Speaker 1: might be using a different name here in the US,
Speaker 1: So really the only thing that I could rely on
Speaker 1: was his last name. So I just started looking up
Speaker 1: phone numbers as in You just going through the phone
Speaker 1: book looking for the last name Kim in Chicago. That's
Speaker 1: that's gonna be a lot to go through. It was.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was using other stuff too, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I kind of just had to call people, and I
Speaker 1: probably call it at least a dozen numbers, and most
Speaker 1: of them were out of service. I think I got
Speaker 1: maybe one person to answer, but she clearly had no
Speaker 1: idea what I was talking about, so that was a
Speaker 1: wrong number. I also found some email addresses on Google,
Speaker 1: but most of those bounced back, and one of them
Speaker 1: did go through, but no one ever replied. I also
Speaker 1: found a couple of addresses, and I was thinking maybe
Speaker 1: I could send a letter. You were just really trying
Speaker 1: everything right. I was hoping that I could interview him,
Speaker 1: but at the very least I felt like we should
Speaker 1: tell Mr Kim what we were doing and give him
Speaker 1: the opportunity to make a comment since for so long
Speaker 1: he basically was the face of TAJ and Yo. But
Speaker 1: after all the phone calls and emails didn't go through,
Speaker 1: I thought, well, if I write a letter, what if
Speaker 1: it gets lost in the mail or he just doesn't answer.
Speaker 1: And at the time I was in Ohio, visiting family,
Speaker 1: so I thought, I'm not that far from Illinois, so
Speaker 1: I might as well, at the very least go to
Speaker 1: the address that I have just to see if I
Speaker 1: could just talk to him in person. So no sending
Speaker 1: a letter, just pull up to his house directly. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So I got in the car on a Sunday morning
Speaker 1: and I drove to Chicago to try to find Mr Kim. Hi. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it's me. It's Stephanie, and it is eighty nine am.
Speaker 1: I am freakishly on time. The drive from my parents
Speaker 1: place is like five hours long, so I had a
Speaker 1: bunch of time to think. I was thinking about the
Speaker 1: Tajanio Forum and Mr Kim, and I was also running
Speaker 1: through all the questions that I wanted to ask him.
Speaker 1: But as I got closer, I started thinking about something
Speaker 1: that had occurred to me but that I sort of
Speaker 1: also avoided thinking about too much. When I got there,
Speaker 1: I've hearked and I called our supervising producer, Janet. One
Speaker 1: of the things that I've been thinking about, how can
Speaker 1: I come off as like super comforting and happy and
Speaker 1: also like be wearing my face mask and be like
Speaker 1: a random black person walking into this building totally. I mean,
Speaker 1: I felt sort of weird for even saying that to her,
Speaker 1: because I was the one who said I wanted to
Speaker 1: find Mr Kim right right, And I was thinking, you
Speaker 1: know what if I ruined our chance to talk to
Speaker 1: him because I'm suspicious? Yeah, yo, okay, So to be real,
Speaker 1: this is actually part of what I want to talk about,
Speaker 1: because when you told me that you've just been wandering
Speaker 1: around looking around in Chicago, I thought, man, I mean
Speaker 1: depending on the community. Just a solitary black person walking
Speaker 1: in uninvited to a residential building that can already make
Speaker 1: people really nervous, let alone what it is you want
Speaker 1: to talk to them about. I mean, I've been in
Speaker 1: the situation where you know, you kind of have to
Speaker 1: be overly really really friendly because you have to anticipate
Speaker 1: that people may have preconceived notions or stereotypes of you,
Speaker 1: but you still have to interact with them exactly x exactly.
Speaker 1: That's exactly how it's feeling. And you know what happens
Speaker 1: in these scenarios, like you can't think about it too much.
Speaker 1: And I was already there, so I kind of had
Speaker 1: to shove these feelings aside and just keep going yeah,
Speaker 1: I get it. Oh, well, so you were there. What
Speaker 1: was it like? So I got out of the car
Speaker 1: and I looked at the building, and up close it
Speaker 1: looked different. Like on Google Maps, it looked like an
Speaker 1: apartment complex, but in person, it looked more like some
Speaker 1: sort of facility. Basically, it's so quiet. It seems loud
Speaker 1: because of the wind, but it's actually very quiet. There's
Speaker 1: the wind, the front head, sliding doors, and a number
Speaker 1: that I had to call to be buzzed in. Your
Speaker 1: call has been forwarded to an automated voice messaging system. Joe, Hello,
Speaker 1: it's not available at the cell. Please record your message.
Speaker 1: When you finished recording, you may hang up. I kept dialing,
Speaker 1: but nobody at the front desk was there, but someone
Speaker 1: came up and let me in. I had what I
Speaker 1: was pretty sure was Mr Kim's apartment number, so I
Speaker 1: walked down the hall, found it and knocked here someone
Speaker 1: no answer. I waited a while, but I figured, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm here. I can't just leave, so I started asking around.
Speaker 1: I think I probably asked four to five people, just hey,
Speaker 1: do you know Mr Kim? Yeah exactly, but nobody did.
Speaker 1: And then I walked up to this one person are.
Speaker 1: She didn't know him either, but when she found out
Speaker 1: that I'm a reporter, she said that she did have
Speaker 1: something she wanted to tell me. I work for a
Speaker 1: Vice News. Well start taking notes, yes, of what you're
Speaker 1: hearing about a place like this the good and this
Speaker 1: neighbor had lived in the building for a couple of
Speaker 1: years and didn't once he use her real name, So
Speaker 1: I'm going to call her Paula. We chatted for an hour,
Speaker 1: So tell me more, like, who who comes to live here?
Speaker 1: Sometimes I've seen some children bring their parents over here.
Speaker 1: So it turns out that this complex is like an
Speaker 1: affordable housing community for lower income elderly residents. Paula told
Speaker 1: me that a lot of people who stay there get
Speaker 1: some kind of government assistance, and sometimes nurses will come
Speaker 1: and help people bathe or do stuff around the house. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it's a nursing home. Not really. Nursing home usually
Speaker 1: have pretty strict rules, but at this place, residents can
Speaker 1: come and go whenever they want. But also there was
Speaker 1: something kind of off about it. Paula started telling me
Speaker 1: the story. There's this one woman that she was brought
Speaker 1: in because her children encouraged her, and boy did she
Speaker 1: thought it. Now she walks around like like a dead face,
Speaker 1: your blank face, and I think she just gave up
Speaker 1: the fight and she just she probably just waiting until
Speaker 1: the day comes when she's taken. Oh man, this place
Speaker 1: sounds like it was just kind of sad. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't really know, and I also don't know how
Speaker 1: much of Paula's story is true. But this place did
Speaker 1: have something that felt kind of sad about it, and
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure if this is a place where someone
Speaker 1: like Mr Kim, likely in the sixties and out goes
Speaker 1: to live a full life. But this vibe that I
Speaker 1: was getting it could also be because I was there
Speaker 1: on a weekend and maybe most residents were just gone.
Speaker 1: So Paula was telling me more about the apartment when
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, the door zipped open and to
Speaker 1: medical staff rolling a stretcher came in. Oh, somebody's being returned.
Speaker 1: It looked like somebody who was at the hospital nearby
Speaker 1: was coming back to their apartment. The neighbors were crowding
Speaker 1: around to say hi. It felt intimate, like outsiders shouldn't
Speaker 1: be seeing this, so I figured I should just go.
Speaker 1: The next day, I went to another address, and I
Speaker 1: was pretty sure that this one was a relative of
Speaker 1: Mr Kim's, so I wanted to see if maybe they
Speaker 1: could help me get in touch with him. Just ringing
Speaker 1: the doorbell Hello, Someone opened the door, but they didn't
Speaker 1: want to talk, so I stopped recording. They did confirm
Speaker 1: that they were related to Mr Kim, but they didn't
Speaker 1: have anything else to say. I wasn't surprised, but it
Speaker 1: did help connect some dots. It felt like the chances
Speaker 1: were high that Kim did live in those apartments, so
Speaker 1: I went back. I figured even if he didn't answer,
Speaker 1: I could at least write a note and put it
Speaker 1: under the door, so I knocked on the door. I
Speaker 1: was fully prepared to just write a note and try later,
Speaker 1: but then I heard someone moving around inside, so I
Speaker 1: tried talking through the door. Hi, business Stephanie. Mr Kim.
Speaker 1: Can I ask you a question? Him? Oh? Mr Kim,
Speaker 1: An I giving my information? He said no, he didn't
Speaker 1: want to talk. So I wrote down my information and
Speaker 1: slid it under the door and walked away. So he
Speaker 1: obviously didn't want to talk about any of this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess there is an outside chance that
Speaker 1: that wasn't him, but the address and his family down
Speaker 1: the road. It adds up. We did write several letters
Speaker 1: to him, but he never replied, which sucks because I
Speaker 1: had a lot of things that I wanted to ask
Speaker 1: him about. I'm sure you did too. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: to start off with why Tableau? Yeah, and like how
Speaker 1: did he even start down this journey with tablow? And
Speaker 1: what if you think about the forum now? Does he
Speaker 1: regret any of it or does he wish that he
Speaker 1: did things differently? And I also kind of want to
Speaker 1: know about his life, like what is he up to
Speaker 1: now and why does he still not believe Tableau? Right?
Speaker 1: Because you found out that he's still posting about Tableau yep,
Speaker 1: our producer Minji and I were checking out all the
Speaker 1: comments associated with his user name. We found out that
Speaker 1: he made a whole other private forum and it's not
Speaker 1: that big, maybe ten thousand members, but he is still
Speaker 1: posting on it to this day. Yeah. Yeah. The ones
Speaker 1: that I've seen are the ones where he's posting about
Speaker 1: these different education credentials cases that are more current. Right.
Speaker 1: There was a big one that happened actually when we
Speaker 1: were in Korea, when the Senior Secretary's daughter, Chill Men,
Speaker 1: was accused of gaming the education system also to get
Speaker 1: into this elite school. Yeah, he's still really into this stuff.
Speaker 1: He's also done some media, like when Officer So was
Speaker 1: investigating taj. In two thousand and ten, Kim did a
Speaker 1: two day in person interview with the June On Daily.
Speaker 1: In that interview, he seems to have accepted that Tablo
Speaker 1: did graduate from Stanford, but he really wouldn't admit that
Speaker 1: he was wrong, adding that he thinks other people are
Speaker 1: protecting Tablo in a wider conspiracy to cover up fake degrees.
Speaker 1: He also asked Tablow to drop the charges against him.
Speaker 1: He mentioned that he was getting letters from people threatening
Speaker 1: to come to Chicago and kill his family, adding that
Speaker 1: his family was having a really hard time with the situation.
Speaker 1: I think the closest that will ever get to understanding
Speaker 1: why what becomes lad this crusade is through this sentence
Speaker 1: that he says in the article quote, I did this
Speaker 1: out of justice. Yeah, justice this This is tricky, right,
Speaker 1: because I mean what does justice mean in this scenario?
Speaker 1: And and that brings me back to the original question
Speaker 1: we had, right which is why does he and you
Speaker 1: know thirty five current Taijano members, why do they still
Speaker 1: believe that Tableau is lying. And I mean Mr Kim
Speaker 1: did at least partially come around and say that, okay,
Speaker 1: Tableau did graduate from Stanford. But what is it that
Speaker 1: taj is trying to prove now, right? And this is
Speaker 1: when we loop back to Tajnyo again to look at
Speaker 1: the current online forum to see if someone could help.
Speaker 1: Our vice colleagues in South Korea started contacting people too.
Speaker 1: Not surprisingly, a lot of people didn't want to talk
Speaker 1: about this. People have gone to jail who are a
Speaker 1: part of Tajano, So of course any member might be
Speaker 1: nervous about speaking out. But I guess if you put
Speaker 1: all that aside, someone responded, yeah, whatever the case might
Speaker 1: have been, we had somebody from Tajano who is willing
Speaker 1: to speak publicly. And so we flew to Korea and
Speaker 1: all sat down with the Tajano member. Yeah, my conversation
Speaker 1: with him after the break. So today we're in a
Speaker 1: taxi and we're headed over to meet up with the moderator,
Speaker 1: the leader of the taj forums. It took us about
Speaker 1: twenty minutes to get to Damiel. It's arts district of Seoul.
Speaker 1: It's hilly and it has these narrow winding roads, these
Speaker 1: different colored houses, and these little boutique shops everywhere. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: we all met in this coffee shop that the owner
Speaker 1: let us use during some off hours. We all sat down,
Speaker 1: said our hellos and agreed to keep our masks on.
Speaker 1: You're doing. Tong Chong Jung was wearing a polo shirt
Speaker 1: and khakis, and he seemed like the kind of guy
Speaker 1: that you smile at when you passed him on the street.
Speaker 1: He smiled a lot, actually, you could see it in
Speaker 1: his eyes even over the mask, and he was really
Speaker 1: calm and polite. Joan works in e commerce and mostly
Speaker 1: lives in Korea, but he travels abroad for work sometimes.
Speaker 1: It turns out we have a few things in common.
Speaker 1: We're both into technology, and he really liked studying foreign languages,
Speaker 1: and so do I. And when he heard that I'm
Speaker 1: a professor, he kind of got excited because like me,
Speaker 1: he believes that education is really important. Chung joined the
Speaker 1: original tajanio forum about twelve years ago around the time
Speaker 1: when it started. He was a really active member, and
Speaker 1: when the original forum was shut down by neighbor, he
Speaker 1: became the manager of Taijano two we'll have a voice
Speaker 1: actor read the translation of what he told us. What
Speaker 1: made you want to actually join TAJO instead of just
Speaker 1: reading the post. Ever since I was a child, I've
Speaker 1: been interested in history and just his Jong is fifty
Speaker 1: four years old and he grew up in Seoul. He's
Speaker 1: around the same age as what becomes. I can't really
Speaker 1: say how similar the two of them are since I've
Speaker 1: only met Jung, but they did both grow up in
Speaker 1: a really turbulent time in Korea. He was the oldest
Speaker 1: of six kids. Having six kids was common in Korea
Speaker 1: at the time. Back then, child John had to wear
Speaker 1: black school uniforms and have a first cut. Korea was
Speaker 1: developing very fast. Students lived in a strict society and
Speaker 1: who had to study really hard. Everyone who was focused
Speaker 1: on Cheung and Yo Chung is basically about loyalty. In
Speaker 1: the past, it might have referred to loyalty to a king,
Speaker 1: but nowadays it could be interpreted as loyalty to your
Speaker 1: superiors at the company you work for, or even your
Speaker 1: patriotism to your nation. Here is deference that a child
Speaker 1: should show to their parents. So both of them are
Speaker 1: essentially about respecting hierarchy and when Chung was growing up
Speaker 1: in the seventies, that's just what you were expected to
Speaker 1: do respect the hierarchy. But times were changing through the
Speaker 1: eighties and nineties. As Korea went through protests and violent
Speaker 1: military action against its own citizens and blatant government corruption,
Speaker 1: a lot of younger people, including Chung, were starting to
Speaker 1: question whether some of the people at the hierarchical top
Speaker 1: were really worth that respect and to technology was bringing
Speaker 1: people together in ways that let them communicate that frustration.
Speaker 1: At first, junk style technology as a career opportunity and
Speaker 1: a way to have fun. In the only nineties, when
Speaker 1: I was in the army, I worked with the computers.
Speaker 1: I was also posting a line because around the same
Speaker 1: time that many other people were enjoying and lawning about
Speaker 1: the Internet. When Neighbor first introduced their online forums, Jung
Speaker 1: signed up immediately. He spent a lot of his time
Speaker 1: on a forum about strategy games and sometimes you meet
Speaker 1: up with the other members to play in person. A
Speaker 1: couple of years later, in the two thousands, when Tabo
Speaker 1: started to get famous, Sean noticed him. When you first
Speaker 1: heard about Tableau, where were you? I thought they were
Speaker 1: just a very normal music act. What what changed for
Speaker 1: you in your opinion about Epicai. One of the EPICAI members, Cobbler,
Speaker 1: was on a lot of variety shows. I felt it
Speaker 1: was surprising. I went the media for Kristian Tabbler and
Speaker 1: made him sounds like a very special person. Joan was
Speaker 1: pretty used to seeing Tableau on TV, but there's one
Speaker 1: show he remembers that stopped him in his tracks. It
Speaker 1: was two thousand nine. Tableau was on this variety show
Speaker 1: and one of the hosts asked him if he was
Speaker 1: good at school when he was younger. Tableau said, no,
Speaker 1: I was bad in school. The host stops him and says,
Speaker 1: how the hell would you get into Stanford. Don't make
Speaker 1: it sound like it's so easy. Tableau replies that you
Speaker 1: just have to do well. At the last moment, I
Speaker 1: was very shocked. It was different from what I knew
Speaker 1: as a common sense. How could he say you can
Speaker 1: just study well at the end, How could you think
Speaker 1: like that. Chung had worked hard to get where it was,
Speaker 1: and hearing this, it just didn't seem right. Jung told
Speaker 1: me that this was a big reason that he joined
Speaker 1: the Tajingo Forum when it first started in He also
Speaker 1: told me some of the things that he thinks Tableau
Speaker 1: is still lying about. The list is pretty long, but
Speaker 1: in general they're pretty familiar Tajingo talking points. He thinks
Speaker 1: Tableau is faking his language abilities. He thinks he staged
Speaker 1: the graduation photos, and he finds Tableau's claim that he
Speaker 1: finished his degree in three and a half years to
Speaker 1: be suspicious. But the police cleared Tableau of lying about
Speaker 1: languages and degrees and all that. So I asked Jung
Speaker 1: what he thought about that. He said that he doesn't
Speaker 1: think South Korean police actually have the ability to properly
Speaker 1: investigate such a complicated case. I still don't think it
Speaker 1: is Dawn correctly sending a document to the U S
Speaker 1: from Korea is not an investigation. Chung also is that
Speaker 1: even if police do investigate forgeries and they find something
Speaker 1: that they might falsify that report if they've been given
Speaker 1: orders to do so by some powerful superior. Talking to
Speaker 1: Chong No, he made it really clear that he respects
Speaker 1: order and authority. So if the National police and a
Speaker 1: forensics lab publish their findings that Tableau's diploma was authentic,
Speaker 1: why wouldn't that be enough for him? Maybe for a
Speaker 1: lot of people listening to this who are not Korean,
Speaker 1: who don't live here, um, and who didn't experience firsthand.
Speaker 1: I didn't watch the scandal when it happened. This all
Speaker 1: probably sounds like just a misunderstanding and just let it go.
Speaker 1: It sounds like it's much more significant for a lot
Speaker 1: of people, especially you can can you help me understand that?
Speaker 1: Hun Uh. People think this was a simple misunderstanding, but
Speaker 1: the truth is that it has a bigger impluence In Korea.
Speaker 1: Um you can get a job by forging your academic
Speaker 1: background and using that fact background um to get a
Speaker 1: hat in society. It's a problem that we need to fix.
Speaker 1: Chung here is talking about something that we've kind of
Speaker 1: been circling around for a while now. The thing that
Speaker 1: really drove him to be a leader in the Tajeno
Speaker 1: Forum is bigger than table of the person. It's the
Speaker 1: idea that the rich and powerful can skip the line. Well,
Speaker 1: everyone else has to work hard. But to him, it's
Speaker 1: more than just an idea. He'd seen the news about
Speaker 1: Shin jong A, the art curator who facured diploma and
Speaker 1: all the others who got caught afterwards, and he realized
Speaker 1: that there could be countless people living a good life
Speaker 1: thanks to their fake credentials, while others like him have
Speaker 1: to work hard for the same, if not less, John,
Speaker 1: this is not fair, and this was a way of
Speaker 1: doing something about it. It's not just a simple matter
Speaker 1: of education. I think it's about inequality in Korea. And
Speaker 1: another thing that I want to talk about is like
Speaker 1: the cultural context in which this emerge. This is Professor
Speaker 1: hedging Lee again, who teaches communications at the University of
Speaker 1: Southern California. She helped me contextualize and understand what jo
Speaker 1: is getting at here. Back in, one of the things
Speaker 1: where one of the concepts that Koreans were really focused
Speaker 1: on was justice. And I think it has to do
Speaker 1: with a lot of people's discontent with society because first
Speaker 1: of all, there was a widening gap between the halves
Speaker 1: and the half not so people were just not happy
Speaker 1: with what they were seeing and they felt like they
Speaker 1: were living in a society where justice wasn't being seen.
Speaker 1: But if you think about it, there a sense of
Speaker 1: justice was at a very personal level. They weren't thinking
Speaker 1: about justice is something that can be done through changing
Speaker 1: the system for the collective good. For them, justice was
Speaker 1: at an individual level, meaning that, well, here's the system.
Speaker 1: We know it's broken, but look at all these individuals,
Speaker 1: the bad apples, the rotten apples, who are taking advantage
Speaker 1: of it. So they were going after who they deemed
Speaker 1: as the rotten apples instead of the system itself. Now
Speaker 1: he was just an easier target for these people to
Speaker 1: seek justice rather than the broken system, such as education system.
Speaker 1: Korean education system has been broken for so long, and
Speaker 1: this is the case with you know, the United States
Speaker 1: society as well, I think. But there there is a
Speaker 1: tendency to say all these things are broken. But here
Speaker 1: is somebody who is on TV. I'm familiar with them.
Speaker 1: They represent something or they seem to represent something I
Speaker 1: don't like. So it sounds like Table was almost in
Speaker 1: the right place at the right time, or the wrong
Speaker 1: place at the wrong time. He just caught caught the
Speaker 1: crossfire exactly. So it wasn't really about him. It was
Speaker 1: just like what he symbolized at that moment. In the
Speaker 1: United States, a broken public education system can mean a
Speaker 1: lot of things, like how our elementary, middle and high
Speaker 1: schools are essentially racially segregated across the country, or how
Speaker 1: universities cost tens of thousands of dollars per year to attend,
Speaker 1: and they leave students with a lifetime's worth of debt.
Speaker 1: But in Korea, when someone says the education system is broken,
Speaker 1: the nuance is a little different. They're more likely to
Speaker 1: be saying that it's unforgiving. If you test into a
Speaker 1: good college, whatever job you want to do, whatever your
Speaker 1: dreams are, you know that that diploma is going to
Speaker 1: open those doors for you. But if you fail, even
Speaker 1: once those doors start to close, no second chances. This
Speaker 1: is reinforced a pretty much all levels of society, even
Speaker 1: the government. On one of the biggest national exam days,
Speaker 1: planes are not allowed to fly so that they don't
Speaker 1: distract the kids. If students are running late, then police
Speaker 1: will escort them to the testing center. There's no hammering
Speaker 1: on construction sites and absolutely no early stock market opening
Speaker 1: on that day. Even regular people do their best to
Speaker 1: help out by not honking their car horns. The upside
Speaker 1: of this is that this focus has given South Korea
Speaker 1: one of the highest rates of education in the world,
Speaker 1: but it also puts a lot of pressure on students,
Speaker 1: even young woes. A recent survey found that one in
Speaker 1: three middle school students had thought of taking their own life.
Speaker 1: So when Chung and Hedge and Lee talk about things
Speaker 1: like the system and inequality, this is what they mean.
Speaker 1: And Tajno, in its own way, saw itself as trying
Speaker 1: to dismantle all this. It's just that their approach was
Speaker 1: hyper focused on the person that they saw as the
Speaker 1: symbol of everything that was wrong with Korea. We just
Speaker 1: want to pass on just society, iety to our children.
Speaker 1: I don't know how long it's going to take, but
Speaker 1: I will not stop. I hope we can achieve justice.
Speaker 1: Tableau just recently released an album. He's got another one
Speaker 1: coming on the way. He's on TV. What do you
Speaker 1: feel when you see that? Um, I want Tabler to
Speaker 1: live a normal life. I'm totally okay with that. I
Speaker 1: think Tabler could have done wrong things when he was young,
Speaker 1: but there's no reason to think that he's a bad person.
Speaker 1: Maybe Tabler is a better person than me. I hope
Speaker 1: he continues being a wonderful dad. But I also hope
Speaker 1: that he can't clear things up so that I can
Speaker 1: change my mind. If he would just be honest, then UM,
Speaker 1: I think we can settle this inevitable way. Maybe the
Speaker 1: strangest thing here was that Chung actually seems to think
Speaker 1: that he and Tableau could be on the same side,
Speaker 1: fighting for justice to fix the broken system all around them.
Speaker 1: But for that to happen, Chung wants more proof. But
Speaker 1: after all these documents more proof, will there ever be enough?
Speaker 1: And for Tajano two point oh, the forum that's still
Speaker 1: to this day has over thirty five thousand members, what
Speaker 1: is fixing the system? Even? Look like, here's somebody who
Speaker 1: went to Stanford, has this amazing career, and and it's
Speaker 1: almost like you're you're a stand in for you you
Speaker 1: represent I think, something that a lot of people truly hate.
Speaker 1: Has it ever occurred to you that this isn't actually
Speaker 1: about you? Most certainly, of course it's ironic that I
Speaker 1: was a stand in for, um, you know, the social injustices,
Speaker 1: you know, everything wrong about society. I think they they
Speaker 1: saw in in me. They wanted me standing there so
Speaker 1: that they could have some one to throw a punch at.
Speaker 1: And we all were all angry in our own ways. Um,
Speaker 1: but there's no one to really, you know, take the
Speaker 1: punch for it. There's no one to uh take the
Speaker 1: blame for it. Really, it's hard to find someone. And
Speaker 1: I think at that moment um. I was the perfect
Speaker 1: face for it. Most of the kids that are going
Speaker 1: to be listening to my music and that are going
Speaker 1: to be looking up to me, I know they don't
Speaker 1: want to study like I don't like the education system.
Speaker 1: I don't like how I had to live. I don't
Speaker 1: like that I was put through this this thing. And
Speaker 1: I don't want my audience looking to me. And you know,
Speaker 1: having their parents say, see, be like him, study, go
Speaker 1: through the factory, be a machine, so you achieved like him.
Speaker 1: I want them to think that they have an album
Speaker 1: mm hmm. And if that's a bad influence, I really
Speaker 1: honestly don't give a ship. Yes, it's the truth. Next time, Unauthentic,
Speaker 1: how did you feel knowing that there are family members
Speaker 1: who are being implicated in these attacks against you? To
Speaker 1: tell you the truth? I wasn't surprised. You weren't surprised
Speaker 1: because you know, like I didn't get to choose my relatives,
Speaker 1: they didn't get to choose me. Authentic is a production
Speaker 1: of Vice Audio and I Heeart podcast Network, produced and
Speaker 1: reported by Stephanie Karayuki, Minji Cool, Kate Osbourne and myself
Speaker 1: with Janet Lee, Stephanie Brown, and Sam Egan. Sound design
Speaker 1: and original music composition by Kyle Murdoch with additional support
Speaker 1: from Natasha Jacobs. Our supervising producer is Janet Lee, editing
Speaker 1: from Lazy Roberts, fact checking by Minji Ku and Nikole Pasuka.
Speaker 1: Our executive producer and VP Advice Audio is Kate Osbourne.
Speaker 1: Thanks also to our voice actor Chong Mo Young from
Speaker 1: I Heart Podcast Network. Executive producers Nikki e Tor and
Speaker 1: Lindsay Hoffman. I'm Dexter Thomas. Make sure to subscribe wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcast so you don't miss an episode,
Speaker 1: and if you dig it, give us a rating and
Speaker 1: a review,