Speaker 1: Yeah. Two thousand nine was a very good year for Tableau.
Speaker 1: Epic high was at the height of their fame TikTok
Speaker 1: TikTok in this Town. They've been collecting the top music
Speaker 1: awards in Korea and had just been named best hip
Speaker 1: Hop Artist. They were five albums deep by this point,
Speaker 1: and it helped establish Korean hip hop as a legit genre.
Speaker 1: They also started collaborating with major artists. They were music
Speaker 1: a list in Korea. Flow table had also released the
Speaker 1: best selling book of short stories that have been published
Speaker 1: in both Korean and English. He was a regular on
Speaker 1: TV and he was getting cameos and movies. This guy
Speaker 1: was a multi hyphen it I'm killing the mic and
Speaker 1: I'm popping eer blockets. I've been doing this college of
Speaker 1: presidential when I flowed Yo, it ain't hard to tell
Speaker 1: I barrocked the show Obama self. Making his start that
Speaker 1: much brighter was the fact that he had recently started
Speaker 1: dating Hey Jung Kong, one of the most famous actresses
Speaker 1: in Korea and who was internationally famous after starring in
Speaker 1: the film Old Boys. That fall of two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: they got married, and of course the paparazzi were there
Speaker 1: and Then about six months later, a post went up
Speaker 1: online demanding the Tableau tell the truth. The haters had arrived.
Speaker 1: What is my name? Whatever? I can keep writing on
Speaker 1: the first time Mark Yeah, fall from Vice and I
Speaker 1: heart I'm Dexter Thomas and this is authentic. Episode two Tajanyo.
Speaker 1: In the fall of two thousand nine, Epic High was
Speaker 1: coming off of their first tour of the States promoting
Speaker 1: their newest album, Mapped the Soul, and it was a
Speaker 1: massive success. They also had a performance scheduled and Soul
Speaker 1: at Olympic Park. Tableau had seen the stadium on TV
Speaker 1: as a kid, and now he was going to perform there.
Speaker 1: An article about the upcoming performance went up on a
Speaker 1: news website. People were cheering them on except for one
Speaker 1: paragraph buried deep in the comments section. It was titled
Speaker 1: Tableaus diploma forgery. Someone with the user name what Becomes wrote,
Speaker 1: once you are a cop by me, you cannot get
Speaker 1: out of it. Turn your health and bastard, your bro
Speaker 1: and sis who are also screwed. You guys who couldn't
Speaker 1: integrate into the Canadian community and we're kicked out of
Speaker 1: middle school. Came back to South Korea and lined up
Speaker 1: You graduated from American universities. There are you people who
Speaker 1: really study that those prevalenced schools don't live like you,
Speaker 1: you know, live, use your brain before line. Like the
Speaker 1: billions of anonymous posts across the Internet, this comment was
Speaker 1: lost to receive digital chatter, which in South Korea was
Speaker 1: rapidly expanding. I want to talk to you about this
Speaker 1: exciting thing I've discovered. I want to talk to you
Speaker 1: tonight about the Internet. In the early to mid two
Speaker 1: thousand's in America, the Internet wasn't really a big part
Speaker 1: of most people's daily lives. If you wanted to find something,
Speaker 1: it was still a toss up between Google and Alta Vista.
Speaker 1: I'm going out on a limre. I'm gonna stand up
Speaker 1: and be one of the first guys to say I
Speaker 1: think this is a keeper. I mean, this thing is
Speaker 1: here to say, Johnny get what would you like for breakfast? Johnny?
Speaker 1: How did it go? Facebook had just launched in two
Speaker 1: thousand four, and it wasn't that widely used yet. What
Speaker 1: is the Facebook exactly? It's an online directory that connects people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were still in the really early days of gathering
Speaker 1: online where but the Internet in America was a good
Speaker 1: generation behind what was already happening. In Korea, charis highly
Speaker 1: wired country. Pigeon Lee spends a lot of time thinking
Speaker 1: about this stuff. She teaches communications at the University of
Speaker 1: Southern California, and people have been using Internet there used
Speaker 1: to be called PC telecommunications, like back in the nineties.
Speaker 1: You can think of it as like l L you've
Speaker 1: got mail. Technology was moving fast there, and I mean
Speaker 1: that literally. The Internet in South Korea was and still
Speaker 1: is faster than almost anywhere else in the world. And
Speaker 1: in the late nineties a lot of new tech companies
Speaker 1: were popping up. One of them was called Neighbor, and
Speaker 1: it became incredibly central to the way that Koreans live now.
Speaker 1: Neighbor is kind of like Google mixed with Facebook, meaning
Speaker 1: it's a lot of things. It's got a messenger app,
Speaker 1: a car navigation app, search engine, and a shopping platform.
Speaker 1: But maybe most importantly in those days, Neighbor was also
Speaker 1: the home base for a bunch of online communities, and
Speaker 1: that's when people started to actually use um these virtual communities,
Speaker 1: and they would use the space to communicate with one another,
Speaker 1: but also to communicate with the celebrity that the site
Speaker 1: was created. Poor anyone on Neighbor can start a form, or,
Speaker 1: as they call it, on Neighbor, a cafe. They launched
Speaker 1: the feature in two thousand three, and you can think
Speaker 1: of it kind of like a subreddit, but for context
Speaker 1: read it didn't start until two thousand five. Korean people
Speaker 1: started using these cafes to build community fan bases for
Speaker 1: all kinds of things, from music, sports to politics, and
Speaker 1: that pretty quickly ended up having real life impact on
Speaker 1: the outside world. Cafes were immediately a natural place for
Speaker 1: K pop fans. High speed internet connections meant that they
Speaker 1: can not only find things like concert reviews and pictures
Speaker 1: and gossip that wasn't in the magazines, but they could
Speaker 1: also find other like minded fans. It provided a place
Speaker 1: for community. It also provided a place for things to
Speaker 1: get intense. Modern fandom in Korea is pretty intricately tied
Speaker 1: to the development of the Internet and sites like Neighbor,
Speaker 1: and it's developed some slang terms for phenomena that have
Speaker 1: happened there. On one end, you've got sassaying, which is
Speaker 1: a fan that crosses the line from stand into a
Speaker 1: borderline criminal obsession. On the other extreme is the anti fan,
Speaker 1: which is exactly what It sounds like people who have
Speaker 1: the same energy and passion of a die hard K
Speaker 1: pop stand, but they're dedicated to hating a particular celebrity
Speaker 1: and their fans. But in the early days, Tableau wasn't
Speaker 1: even worth an anti fans time. Neither he nor Epic
Speaker 1: High were popular enough, so when people started posting about Tableau,
Speaker 1: they had to dig pretty deep to final videos. This
Speaker 1: clip is from Tableau's first TV appearance on a talk
Speaker 1: show called Yashi Manman. It was December two thousand four.
Speaker 1: Epic High had just released their second album and basically
Speaker 1: no one really knew who they were. This appearance was
Speaker 1: a big deal for Tableau because Yahi Mind Mind was
Speaker 1: one of the most popular shows in Korea at the time.
Speaker 1: But if you watch it, you can tell that Tableau's
Speaker 1: feeling kind of out of place. Pretty much everyone on
Speaker 1: that stage is an actual famous celebrity, and you know
Speaker 1: they have that aura. You can tell through the language
Speaker 1: barrier that this person's got it Tableau. Though he's wearing
Speaker 1: this nerdy blue v Nex sweater, he's got a button
Speaker 1: up and a tie, and most of the time he's
Speaker 1: pretty quiet. It's not until about fourteen minutes into the
Speaker 1: show that Tableau actually gets to say much anything. Someone
Speaker 1: had brought up the topic of affairs and cheating on
Speaker 1: your spouse. Tableau wasn't married, but he kind of gingerly
Speaker 1: starts to chime in. Can check out the Tablou starts
Speaker 1: telling this story about how one day he found out
Speaker 1: his girlfriend had been cheating on him, so he confronts her,
Speaker 1: but instead of yelling at her, he just sort of
Speaker 1: matter of fact he says that she shouldn't go out
Speaker 1: with somebody that she doesn't truly love. And as he's talking,
Speaker 1: the crowd and the hosts they're they're drawn in, they're
Speaker 1: hanging on to every word, and he continues the story
Speaker 1: saying that his girlfriend agreed with him that you should
Speaker 1: only go out with someone you truly love, so she
Speaker 1: dumped him and started dating the other guy, and the
Speaker 1: crowd absolutely just erupts with laughter. Chris, how are you doing?
Speaker 1: Just could it wasn't anything interesting, But honestly, I think
Speaker 1: the fact that it was mentioned during the show that
Speaker 1: I had gone to Stanford, that I had graduated early
Speaker 1: from Stanford, that I was possibly a genius, and you know,
Speaker 1: I played into it. Of course, that one show aired,
Speaker 1: and I walked outside and people were like following me
Speaker 1: and stuff. Overnight, everybody was trying to find out who
Speaker 1: I was. Tableau was just good on TV. His persona
Speaker 1: kind of had something for everyone. Parents like the Stanford
Speaker 1: pedigree because that was a good example for the kids.
Speaker 1: Teenagers like the rebellious rapper attitude, and TV producers. They
Speaker 1: loved having this guy who could hit both of those
Speaker 1: demographics in one package. The oddball genius rapper and all
Speaker 1: this just you know, was a nice package and and
Speaker 1: it definitely worked in our favor. Once Tableau's label realized this,
Speaker 1: they started to send him and the rest of Epic
Speaker 1: High on as many TV shows as possible ahead of
Speaker 1: the third album, released in two thousand five. This album
Speaker 1: was actually meant to be their Hail Mary. If this
Speaker 1: didn't give him a hit, they were going to give up,
Speaker 1: and really the signs were pointing to it not working.
Speaker 1: The TV appearances were nice, but that didn't change the
Speaker 1: fact that Epic High was an underground hip hop group
Speaker 1: whose two other albums didn't really sell. The fact that
Speaker 1: we weren't making any money was really difficult, and it
Speaker 1: had been a while. Right two thousand two, to two
Speaker 1: thousand four or five, and we're still like, we're literally poor,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, we can't do that forever. This was
Speaker 1: supposed to be our final, like album, and we're done,
Speaker 1: so let's just make the music like, let's just do
Speaker 1: everything we wanted. Hence the third album is called Swan Songs.
Speaker 1: So the album came out and that Hail Mary they
Speaker 1: put up it connected. The main single was called Fly
Speaker 1: and it was an absolute kit and we dropped. The
Speaker 1: album immediately went to number one on every chart. Their
Speaker 1: earlier music was more raw, underground, college, backpacker style hip hop.
Speaker 1: Fly is none of that. It's catchy, it's slick, and
Speaker 1: it was exactly what the market was looking for. Epic
Speaker 1: High went from a niche group that only had underground
Speaker 1: cloud on hobbyist message boards to the center of the mainstream,
Speaker 1: which meant more press, more interviews, and more TV tableaus
Speaker 1: on camera. Personality was that enticing dichotomy. The TV loves
Speaker 1: the genius bad boy, the Stanford grad who ditched being
Speaker 1: a lawyer to do hip hop. The concept itself was provocative,
Speaker 1: and his care free vibe just played that up. But
Speaker 1: provocative can kind of be a double edged sword, especially
Speaker 1: on Korean TV, and actually he's image on TV was
Speaker 1: I should not say that it is not great, but
Speaker 1: Utuh Lee is a professor at George Mason University where
Speaker 1: he teaches about the Korean music industry. He's a huge
Speaker 1: hip hop fan. He was an early Epic High fan
Speaker 1: back in the day, and every now and again he'd
Speaker 1: go to the concerts. I remember that he Epic High
Speaker 1: gave a kind of brochure before the show talking about
Speaker 1: Carl Marx, capitalism and criticism about the like the Neo
Speaker 1: de Roaltum or something. Epic High had been outspoken about
Speaker 1: politics and society since their debut record. Tableau in particular
Speaker 1: saw his lyrics as a way to talk about what
Speaker 1: was going on in the world, which is what people
Speaker 1: expect from a hip hop record, but it wasn't what
Speaker 1: people expected on prime time Korean TV. When he appeared
Speaker 1: on variety shows or the sitcom he didn't seem to
Speaker 1: be really serious and Tableau when he made appearances on
Speaker 1: all these entertainment shows, a lot of focus would be
Speaker 1: on his experience studying. He wasn't really uh like the
Speaker 1: Koreans would expect. Story of hardship, paging Lee of University
Speaker 1: of Southern California. Again like, oh, I've worked hard, Like
Speaker 1: I had less of four hours sleep every day preparing
Speaker 1: for exams. That wasn't a story that Tableau was offering. Pready.
Speaker 1: Often when Tableau would be on TV, someone would ask
Speaker 1: him what life was like in an American university. On
Speaker 1: one of those shows, the host said that he'd heard
Speaker 1: that it Harvard people would go running naked after exams.
Speaker 1: Tablow said, yeah, that happens at Stanford too. He goes
Speaker 1: on to say that along with studying, this is all
Speaker 1: a normal part of American college life, which it's true,
Speaker 1: It just wasn't a sort of serious conversation that people
Speaker 1: were used to hearing from a graduate of a prestigious
Speaker 1: university on Korean TV. And then there was the fact
Speaker 1: that Tablow had never done the mandatory military service that
Speaker 1: nearly all South Korean men under twenty eight are required
Speaker 1: to do. So he's exempt from it because he is
Speaker 1: a Canadian citizen. So he has all these qualities, uh
Speaker 1: that are considered to be a sign a privilege in Korea. UM,
Speaker 1: And the thing is he's using that privilege to evade
Speaker 1: responsibility as a Korean citizen, or at least that's you know,
Speaker 1: how Korean people were taking it above the surface. These
Speaker 1: questions or doubts didn't really affect Epic High's mainstream success,
Speaker 1: but there was always an undercurrent for some people. Tablow
Speaker 1: came off is too untraditional. He talked about how he
Speaker 1: got kicked out of school because he was he was
Speaker 1: caught in a fight um or how he almost like failed,
Speaker 1: Like he had a lot of stories that kind of
Speaker 1: went against stories of people who went to good universities.
Speaker 1: After that hit album Swan Songs came out in two
Speaker 1: thousand five, Tableau started to slow down with the TV stuff.
Speaker 1: He had accomplished his mission, which was to get his
Speaker 1: foot in the door with the Korean public. Now he
Speaker 1: wanted to get back to his real focus, the music.
Speaker 1: You know, I had gotten sick of being on TV.
Speaker 1: I was overworked. I was taking like, you know, painkillers
Speaker 1: to be on TV at this point, but I knew
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, now I can make my own decisions.
Speaker 1: Epic Haig spent the next few years making music and
Speaker 1: playing shows in Korea and Japan. They did their first
Speaker 1: US tour in the spring of two thousand nine, and
Speaker 1: they sold out venues in New York in l A
Speaker 1: promoting their first release under their own label. Then that fall,
Speaker 1: DJ two cuts head to report for his mandatory two
Speaker 1: year military service, left Mithra and Tableau to finish their
Speaker 1: seventh studio album. Soon after that, Mithra also had to
Speaker 1: leave for his own military service. In the midst of
Speaker 1: all that, I think is when I first heard from
Speaker 1: my label that they had received a Manila envelope with
Speaker 1: a bunch of documents with conspiracy theories kind of about me,
Speaker 1: basically a PR packet for why why I'm a fraud?
Speaker 1: But you know, my mind was on like having a child,
Speaker 1: you know, and becoming a dad. While I was busy
Speaker 1: watching The Simpsons eating cheeseballs with my wife. This had
Speaker 1: circulated to the point where it was already agreed upon
Speaker 1: that it was probably true. That's after the break m like,
Speaker 1: you know, like normal people do. I fell in love
Speaker 1: and I was getting married and I was going to
Speaker 1: have a kid, and then time passes and it's my
Speaker 1: daughter is born and I'm at the hospital and it's
Speaker 1: like it's like an indescribable awe and confusion, like that
Speaker 1: I've created a living being and like I'm holding. It's
Speaker 1: just an emotion that I can't really describe. And we're
Speaker 1: at the hospital for a day or two, and you know,
Speaker 1: I took a picture of I think my daughter's like
Speaker 1: foot or hand, and and Twitter was like slowly a
Speaker 1: thing now, and I thought, you know, you have to
Speaker 1: share every thing, right, so especially the first, you know,
Speaker 1: the birth of your first kid. So I posted the
Speaker 1: picture and I was like I just had my daughter,
Speaker 1: my wife is safe, thank God, and stuff like this,
Speaker 1: and I posted it and then some mentions are coming
Speaker 1: in and I'm looking and some of them are like congrats,
Speaker 1: but a lot of them are like why don't you
Speaker 1: fucking explain yourself? And some of them are outright like
Speaker 1: just die what about your lies? And my wife is
Speaker 1: like right next to me, I'm like visibly shocked. She
Speaker 1: can see your face. Yeah, and she's like what what
Speaker 1: do they? What are people saying? Right? But I was
Speaker 1: like I was just give me a second year. I like,
Speaker 1: I have to just just give me a second. And
Speaker 1: I try to figure out what was going on. I
Speaker 1: explained to my wife as best as I could, but
Speaker 1: I didn't want to like stress her out into situation.
Speaker 1: So I said Oh yeah, I just yeah, they're congratulating
Speaker 1: on spontane like people are spreading rumors about me. It
Speaker 1: was a thing. Now. What had started as a wayward
Speaker 1: post on an article comments section the follow two thousand
Speaker 1: nine had quietly spread. In May, a new neighbor cafe
Speaker 1: forum was created. It had a catchy name so touching
Speaker 1: your means or touching your gage, and shiger yamida, which
Speaker 1: means we demand tru from Tableau. The founder of the
Speaker 1: forum stated that it was quote dedicated to uncovering the
Speaker 1: truth about Tableau. He started posting videos from old TV interviews, documents,
Speaker 1: and anything he could find to back up his claims
Speaker 1: that Tableau was lying. The initial motivations of the forum
Speaker 1: are a little murky. Some people argue that it started
Speaker 1: with anti fans, people who were just intra didn't seeing
Speaker 1: Tableau fall, but members of the forum would insist that
Speaker 1: it was always about the pursuit of truth, that they
Speaker 1: knew that Tableau was lying about his degree and they
Speaker 1: wanted the line to stop. And first I thought it
Speaker 1: was just bizarre, like, you know, why would why would
Speaker 1: this be a big deal. Within a matter of weeks,
Speaker 1: Tajano was getting hundreds of comments a day. Users were
Speaker 1: sharing articles and videos. They also started looking into anything
Speaker 1: or anyone that could have a connection to Tableau at Stanford.
Speaker 1: After a while, what I do remember is people kept asking, Hey,
Speaker 1: didn't you go to Stanford? Do you know about this
Speaker 1: whole Tableau situation. At the time, Sean Limb was working
Speaker 1: as a journalist for one of Korea's biggest broadcasting companies.
Speaker 1: Sean was a year ahead of Tableau when they met
Speaker 1: at Stanford. What was your relationship like with him? YouTube?
Speaker 1: Personally it was it was for a while sort of
Speaker 1: like brothers. Really yeah, close. I felt like I was
Speaker 1: really close with him, Like there was a time, there
Speaker 1: was a period like maybe about I would say, two
Speaker 1: quarters that we were like always together, like especially like
Speaker 1: we're in the same dorm, like seeing each other like
Speaker 1: practically every day. They went different ways after college. Sean
Speaker 1: stayed in the US for a couple of years before
Speaker 1: moving to Korea and pursuing broadcast journalism, but they still
Speaker 1: kept in contact. Sean was proud of his college buddy,
Speaker 1: but he didn't brag about it or anything, so he
Speaker 1: didn't have much occasion to talk about Tableau with strangers.
Speaker 1: But then the rumors started getting bigger, and he found
Speaker 1: himself in some weird conversations. So somebody would ask you, hey,
Speaker 1: was Tableau there when you were there? I'm like, yes,
Speaker 1: of course, they're really are you sure? And then it
Speaker 1: increasingly came from people who are like producers, like people
Speaker 1: who were like, I'm supposed to like not have an
Speaker 1: attitude with, not think that they're stupid. I have to
Speaker 1: work with, have to trust their news judgment. So people
Speaker 1: were like just like ravenous, like like zombies, just trying
Speaker 1: to like like suck the blood. As the forum grew,
Speaker 1: individual users started getting a sort of celebrity status within
Speaker 1: the group. One of them was a user posting under
Speaker 1: the name what Becomes What Becomes posted a lot, often
Speaker 1: multiple times a day, and they were pretty forceful on
Speaker 1: May sixt what becomes Roge just get the transcript from
Speaker 1: Stanford and show it to us. Instead of saying, I
Speaker 1: have a friend who can confirm that I did study
Speaker 1: at Stanford, why can't you just show us the transcript.
Speaker 1: This will all be over if you show us just
Speaker 1: one document, turn yourself into the police and say that
Speaker 1: you forged diplomas, you bastard. South Korea is notching playground
Speaker 1: where you just come in and pray on others. It
Speaker 1: seemed like they were new allegations every day. That original
Speaker 1: statement that Tableau was lying about his college degree turned
Speaker 1: into deeper accusations about identity theft, fraud, and conspiracy. That Tableau,
Speaker 1: whose real name was Daniel Lee, had stolen the identity
Speaker 1: of a real Stanford graduate who was also named Daniel Lee.
Speaker 1: Or maybe he didn't steal it, maybe he paid the
Speaker 1: real Daniel Lee off to keep quiet, or maybe he
Speaker 1: killed Daniel and took his diploma and he was able
Speaker 1: to get away with this because he was being protected
Speaker 1: by the media and the Korean government, or maybe it
Speaker 1: was the American government, maybe the FBI and also Korean
Speaker 1: elites had something to hide and they were protecting their own.
Speaker 1: But the one thing that everyone continued to question was
Speaker 1: his degree. Could Tableau really have graduated from Stanford with
Speaker 1: a bachelor's and a master's in just three and a
Speaker 1: half years. Taijano wasn't just commenting. They were also doing
Speaker 1: their own research. Their efforts weren't very coordinated, especially not
Speaker 1: at first. Some people didn't go much further than just
Speaker 1: copying and pasting stuff. They had heard elsewhere, but there
Speaker 1: were others who were much more focused. They were searching
Speaker 1: and gathering documents, and then one day they got their
Speaker 1: hands on what they believed was a smoking gun, Tableau's
Speaker 1: supposed diploma. When Tableau started going on TV talk shows
Speaker 1: like to show a picture of his diploma on the screen,
Speaker 1: it was already out there, so it wasn't too hard
Speaker 1: to find an image of that online. But then a
Speaker 1: taijan you know member found a diploma from another Stanford student,
Speaker 1: and the signature from the university president on that student's
Speaker 1: diploma looked completely different from the one on Tableaus. The
Speaker 1: Taijenio message boards blew up. This was huge. They needed
Speaker 1: to find someone who had graduated in two thousand one.
Speaker 1: If that signature looked different, they could prove that tableaus
Speaker 1: diploma was fake and the Tableau was a liar. Hey, John,
Speaker 1: this is this is Dexter from Weice. I am downstairs, okay.
Speaker 1: John Shank is a lawyer. He graduated from Stanford with
Speaker 1: a bachelor's degree in English in two thousand one, the
Speaker 1: year before Tableau. I met him in Los Angeles. Last fall,
Speaker 1: I started getting phone calls from somebody and he asked
Speaker 1: me what my name was. About ten years ago, John
Speaker 1: was in his office and I told him I was
Speaker 1: John Shank, you know. And he said he was part
Speaker 1: of a group and he was hoping to get a
Speaker 1: copy of my diploma. And I would just hang and
Speaker 1: I'm just like, who is this weirdo? He got another call,
Speaker 1: then another, and each time John would say the same thing. Look,
Speaker 1: I'm hanging up now, let's please stop calling me. But
Speaker 1: after yet another call, John was just about to hang up,
Speaker 1: and then the guy said, wait, we'll pay you ten
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. So I went, okay, let's let's hear some more.
Speaker 1: Ten thousand dollars. That's how much the person on the
Speaker 1: phone was offering John to make a copy of his
Speaker 1: Stanford diploma. And then and then I started asking, okay,
Speaker 1: you're gonna pay me ten tho dollars and then then
Speaker 1: it's mine and that you don't want me to give
Speaker 1: you any money, or hold any money or do anything. John, again,
Speaker 1: is a lawyer and he's seen all kinds of scams,
Speaker 1: so he was skeptical. But the guy on the phone
Speaker 1: assured John that this was not a scam and he
Speaker 1: was a real person. This movement that he was part
Speaker 1: of to basically capture Tableau in a lie was just
Speaker 1: a side gig for him. He was a musician, he
Speaker 1: was a real person, and he's like, I'm and he
Speaker 1: told me, he was like, you know, I live in
Speaker 1: Beverly Hills. If you want, we can meet at the
Speaker 1: part because there's a little park next to the montage.
Speaker 1: And I was like, okay, sure, that would be a
Speaker 1: great way to check him out, see if he's for real.
Speaker 1: So on the day of their appointment, John shows up
Speaker 1: to the park. He's a little apprehensive, but when the
Speaker 1: man from the phone call shows up, he seems pretty normal.
Speaker 1: He seemed very honest, he seemed very sincere about his cause.
Speaker 1: It seemed important to him. And so what what specifically
Speaker 1: dasy ask you for at that at that moment, he
Speaker 1: didn't really ask me for much other than he wants
Speaker 1: he's been saying from the beginning, he'd like a copy
Speaker 1: of my diploma so they can should prove that Tableau
Speaker 1: faked his diploma, okay, right, And so I kind of
Speaker 1: was like, all right, if you want to copy of
Speaker 1: my diploma, I'll give you a copy of my diploma.
Speaker 1: It's nothing wrong. With that, right. So then I well,
Speaker 1: then I went back to my law firm and talked
Speaker 1: to every friend and every colleague in there to see
Speaker 1: if anybody could come up with an explanation of how
Speaker 1: this could possibly be a scam that I was, you know,
Speaker 1: inadvertently walking into right, and nobody could really come up
Speaker 1: with anything. Everyone's like, no, it seems like I just
Speaker 1: gonna give you some money. You should take it. He
Speaker 1: had one hang up though. They all seemed really fixated
Speaker 1: on this Tableau guys document. John, being a lawyer, figured
Speaker 1: that he ought to have a look at the paperwork too,
Speaker 1: so before he decided to go through with it, John
Speaker 1: asked the musician to give him whatever copy of Tableau's
Speaker 1: diploma that they had. So the guy gave it to him,
Speaker 1: and I compared to my diploma, and the signatures matched
Speaker 1: the signature of the president who signs the diploma. That's
Speaker 1: what they were looking for. Because of the signatures didn't match,
Speaker 1: they could point to Tablow's diploma and say, see that's
Speaker 1: a fate. I compared them and I said, these are
Speaker 1: exactly the same signature, and yeah, and so I so
Speaker 1: when I called to say, hey, I have my diploma
Speaker 1: I compared to Tableaus and they're the same. Are you
Speaker 1: still sure you want to do this? And they're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we do. Wait weirder still right. I was like, this
Speaker 1: is not good evidence for you. I told him that,
Speaker 1: and then they say they wanted anyway. He said, no,
Speaker 1: don't worry about it, just come and pay you ten bucks.
Speaker 1: So John asked another lawyer friend to come with him
Speaker 1: to do this thing. They drove to an office and
Speaker 1: they would invited to sit down in the room. The
Speaker 1: musician was there, along with another couple of people who
Speaker 1: didn't talk much. They got right to business. He pulled
Speaker 1: out his trust account check book and build out to
Speaker 1: check and put it on the table. So, okay, here's
Speaker 1: the check. Can I see your diploma? Put my diploma
Speaker 1: on the table, and then they took it over the
Speaker 1: coffee machine and made a copye. But before they gave
Speaker 1: him the money, they sprung one final thing on him.
Speaker 1: They wanted him to sign a statement. Nothing major, just
Speaker 1: a simple question. Um. They asked me if I had
Speaker 1: ever seen Tableau on campus, and I said I didn't
Speaker 1: know him. I need some statement to that effect and
Speaker 1: signed it and that was it. That was it. Next morning,
Speaker 1: as soon as the bank opened, I went to the
Speaker 1: bank and got cash. The check it's tang straight up
Speaker 1: actually had it charged me five dollars to give me
Speaker 1: a cash on the spot. And then I and then
Speaker 1: I walked across the street that I was far ago
Speaker 1: and deposited in my bank account. And that was it,
Speaker 1: and that was it what my heart was pumping. John's
Speaker 1: a responsible dude, so he put the money in his
Speaker 1: savings and that was it. Was over, or so he thought.
Speaker 1: A little while later, he heard from the musician again.
Speaker 1: The musician guy was asking me, um if I would
Speaker 1: be willing to go to Seoul and give testimony. John said, no, thanks,
Speaker 1: I'm done. But I also thought to myself, you know what,
Speaker 1: that might be getting too close to this weird conspiracy
Speaker 1: theory world, and I don't want until I kind of
Speaker 1: shied away from that. You said, you did you were
Speaker 1: getting too close to a weird conspiracy theory. Was that
Speaker 1: were you sort of be in the headspace where, hey, look, yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't really want to be associated with this group.
Speaker 1: You know. It just seemed like they were really holding
Speaker 1: on to an obvious and obviously incorrect perception. They were
Speaker 1: clearly misguided. John's diploma did not help prove Tableau was lying.
Speaker 1: The signatures on the diploma is matched. If anything, this
Speaker 1: was more proof that Tableau was telling the truth. That's
Speaker 1: not what the Tagno movement wanted to hear. But they
Speaker 1: had a kind of a fail safe that document they'd
Speaker 1: asked John to sign, asking if he'd known Tableau while
Speaker 1: he was at Stanford. He told him the truth, which
Speaker 1: was that he didn't. It's not shocking because they were
Speaker 1: around two thousand students in John and Tableau is graduating class.
Speaker 1: But the Tajano movement latched onto that statement. John's diploma
Speaker 1: wasn't helpful to them anymore. But wait, if Tableau went
Speaker 1: to Stanford, how could John not knowing and they had
Speaker 1: a signed document saying that he didn't. People on ta
Speaker 1: Janyo were convinced that this was further proof that table
Speaker 1: was never even at Stanford and that he should be
Speaker 1: punished for his crimes. That crime thing they were serious about.
Speaker 1: That forgery is a criminal offense in Korea, and if
Speaker 1: Tableau had been giving out a fake document, he could
Speaker 1: be facing up to five years in jail or a
Speaker 1: fine of ten million one which in us money is
Speaker 1: a little over eight thousand dollars. But that fine wasn't
Speaker 1: enough of ta janyo. They wanted him behind bars. Now,
Speaker 1: have you ever had any contact with Tableau? No? What
Speaker 1: what would you say to him? If if you two
Speaker 1: were to talk? Do you think I'd say? You know?
Speaker 1: That must have really sucked that experience for him. He
Speaker 1: really had like a huge portion of his country one
Speaker 1: after for something he didn't do. You had a small
Speaker 1: part in that. I think I helped him, do you.
Speaker 1: I gave the evidence that showed that his diploma was accurate.
Speaker 1: M It has to be so weird to be at all,
Speaker 1: even obliquely involved in such a life changing thing for somebody.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, if someone offered me ten g's to
Speaker 1: make a photo copy of my diploma, I mean, just
Speaker 1: a more detailed version of what's already on my resume,
Speaker 1: I probably would have said yeah. And John was smart
Speaker 1: enough to pull himself out of this situation before it
Speaker 1: had a chance to get really weird, he says it.
Speaker 1: For years this was mostly just a funny story he
Speaker 1: could tell over drinks at the bar. The fact that
Speaker 1: there was obvious evidence that refuted the things that the
Speaker 1: Tajo wanted to prove and that they are interested in
Speaker 1: that part of it is despite that, hey, look this
Speaker 1: is this is bad for you. Is sort of mind bending.
Speaker 1: I mean, if there's anything that we have learned in
Speaker 1: the past let's call it five years, that evidence does
Speaker 1: not persuade anybody, you know. I mean a lot of
Speaker 1: people apparently can believe a lot of things regardless of
Speaker 1: what the obvious facts might be, and this was just
Speaker 1: an instance of that that people will believe what they
Speaker 1: want to believe. By June, the rumors were reaching beyond Tableau.
Speaker 1: His family was now being accused of helping him to
Speaker 1: forge his diploma. His father was being called a con man,
Speaker 1: and they were accusing his brother of lying about his
Speaker 1: own college degree. The tajan Forum now had more than
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand members, and if this stuff had stayed
Speaker 1: on Taijano, that would have been one thing. But it's
Speaker 1: spread because the media found this forum fascinating, and so
Speaker 1: whenever Tijanio would come up with the new accusation, the
Speaker 1: media would latch on and it would make headlines. This
Speaker 1: exposed more new people to the conspiracy theories and the
Speaker 1: Tajen Your forums grew and grew. By this point, things
Speaker 1: were bleeding out into the real world. Tableau's inbox was
Speaker 1: flooded with emails from people sending pictures of smashed epic
Speaker 1: high CDs. His voicemail was full of angry messages and accusations.
Speaker 1: His TV appearances were getting canceled. Tableau was barely able
Speaker 1: to leave the house because anytime he did people would
Speaker 1: follow him and stare. He was getting yelled at by
Speaker 1: random strangers on the street, calling him a liar and
Speaker 1: a cheat. This was all happening within weeks of that
Speaker 1: first comment being posted online. Soon after this, there were
Speaker 1: actual street protests against table popping up all over the city.
Speaker 1: At first, Tableau hadn't said much. He thought this was
Speaker 1: just some weird internet stuff that would fizzle out. But
Speaker 1: it didn't, and two members of Tajno Tableau's silence started
Speaker 1: to look like evidence that he was lying. But then
Speaker 1: in June, an article about Tableau came out in the
Speaker 1: Jungang Daily. This wasn't just some site. It was a
Speaker 1: respectable media outlet, one of the biggest newspapers in Korea,
Speaker 1: who was a serious article. But most importantly, it featured
Speaker 1: a copy of Tableau's full transcript. Before this, all most
Speaker 1: people had seen was a screenshot of his diploma. This though,
Speaker 1: this was the long form document, the credits, He took
Speaker 1: the names of the teachers, the grades, and of course
Speaker 1: the Stanford Seal, an official complete document. This was exactly
Speaker 1: what had been looking for, and Tablo hadn't just given
Speaker 1: the newspaper his documents. He did an interview with the reporter,
Speaker 1: and honestly, I walked out of the interview and as
Speaker 1: soon as the articles were out, like a rational person,
Speaker 1: I thought it was done. A few hours later when
Speaker 1: I learned that that was not going to be the case.
Speaker 1: That people were not accepting these documents as real. They
Speaker 1: were saying my diploma was doctored. They were saying the
Speaker 1: transcript was fake. It made no difference, and as it
Speaker 1: turned out, Taijano was just getting started next time on authentic.
Speaker 1: They were trying to attack everybody who was associated with
Speaker 1: Tableau and talk about docks, and they were really good.
Speaker 1: You know how people think that, like, you know, like, hey,
Speaker 1: don't think about the comments, Hey, don't worry about the comments,
Speaker 1: don't don't read the comments. That's not real, you know,
Speaker 1: that's detached from reality. All you gotta do is turn
Speaker 1: your computer off, dude. Just unplug logout man, and you're fine.
Speaker 1: I gotta say, like the experience I had, it wasn't detached.
Speaker 1: You know, people were threatening me online. I tried to
Speaker 1: turn it off, but in the real world it still
Speaker 1: happened like it was connected. Authentic is a production of
Speaker 1: Vice Audio and I Heeart Podcast Network, produced and reported
Speaker 1: by Stephanie Karayuki, Minji Coo, Kate Osborne, and myself with
Speaker 1: Janet Lee, Stephanie Brown and Sam Egan. Sound design and
Speaker 1: original music composition by Kyle Murdoch, with additional support from
Speaker 1: Natasha Jacobs. Our supervising producer is Janet Lee, editing from
Speaker 1: Lacy Roberts, fact checking by Minji Ku and Nikole Pasuka.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Isney Bobo Nooiet for Epic High's original
Speaker 1: concert footage. This episode features Epic High music from their
Speaker 1: album Swan Songs and Map the Soul, distributed by c
Speaker 1: J Music. Our executive producer and VP of Vice Audio
Speaker 1: is Kate Osbourne. From I Heeart Podcast Network, executive producers
Speaker 1: Nikki e Tor and Lindsay Hoffman. I'm Dexter Thomas make
Speaker 1: sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcast so you
Speaker 1: don't miss an episode. And if you dig it, give
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Speaker 1: check us out on Twitter and Instagram at Vice Moves