Speaker 1: At the height of the scandal, in a track came
Speaker 1: out by this underground hip hop group called Skull. It's
Speaker 1: a typical disk track. Skull is going after some other
Speaker 1: Korean hip hop artists like Dynamic Duo, but he also
Speaker 1: has some bars for Tableau. One of the lines goes,
Speaker 1: you can lie to other people about your education, but
Speaker 1: you can't lie to yourself. There's cheaters all around us,
Speaker 1: the media. It's all a set up. Someone's manipulating behind
Speaker 1: the scenes. We contacted Skull for comment, he didn't respond.
Speaker 1: But even beyond Skull, Tableau scandal was an opportunity for
Speaker 1: rappers who have been living in Epicaia's shadow. You could
Speaker 1: pile on, thow some lyrical darts, and maybe get some
Speaker 1: new fans. Because like all modern hip hop beef, the
Speaker 1: winner isn't necessarily the best rapper, it's whoever gets the
Speaker 1: most attention. These were the musicians the Tableau came up with,
Speaker 1: and when things started to crumble, they came for him.
Speaker 1: But the whole genius rapper thing was a double edged sword.
Speaker 1: It was a hook that helped Tablett break into the mainstream,
Speaker 1: and it also made some people in the hip hop
Speaker 1: scene turn on it a PHENI fip hop phenim fipop,
Speaker 1: what flies my name never, I can be drum, I
Speaker 1: can I can cat writing there my book around so
Speaker 1: on the Worst Past the Mark Yeah, blah blah blahla
Speaker 1: Vice and I Heart I'm Dexter Thomas and this is
Speaker 1: authentic Episode three, the sellout. When Epic Hi released their
Speaker 1: first album in two thousand three, the Korean music industry
Speaker 1: didn't really know what to do with them. They didn't
Speaker 1: understand how to package us, I guess, so they put
Speaker 1: us in these like I look like a magician in
Speaker 1: my first in my first TV performance, I literally look
Speaker 1: like a magician, and Mitra looks like a pirate, so
Speaker 1: we look like a magical like magical group of pirates.
Speaker 1: They try to make us dance, but they realized we couldn't,
Speaker 1: and so we're somewhere in between like dancing and rapping,
Speaker 1: which makes everything look awkward, and it was just horrible.
Speaker 1: I've seen pictures from these early days and the label
Speaker 1: didn't seem to get hip hop. It looked like they
Speaker 1: were trying to sell Epic High as some kind of
Speaker 1: edgy boy band. But it's hard to blame the label
Speaker 1: because there wasn't a whole lot of precedent. There was
Speaker 1: this group that I really liked in Korea called steg
Speaker 1: And and Voice The Patient Voice, great name right. For
Speaker 1: a long time, hip hop and Korea had been associated
Speaker 1: with this one group. The first time Saltegian Boys got
Speaker 1: on TV was and there's a performance from back then
Speaker 1: that everyone remembers. They were on a music competition show.
Speaker 1: At first, the only difference from any other Korean singers
Speaker 1: is that everyone's wearing baggy clothing New York Yankees jerseys
Speaker 1: and overalls. The lights start out dim and the guy
Speaker 1: in the front is singing what sounds like a run
Speaker 1: of the mill pop valley. But then the lights turn
Speaker 1: on and the beat drops, and then everyone gets up
Speaker 1: and starts dancing like they're in an MC hammer video
Speaker 1: and they start rapping in English to their music at
Speaker 1: first was not really kind of hip hop, but more
Speaker 1: of the dance music with some rapping. Ut ug Lee
Speaker 1: is a music professor, but he was a teenager when
Speaker 1: he saw sell Tegian Boys on that show. The rest
Speaker 1: of the acts were more mainstream stuff like traditional Korean
Speaker 1: pop music, were ballad singers, and the judges gave sell
Speaker 1: Tegian Boys a terrible score. One of them said, quote,
Speaker 1: your lyrics made me feel uncomfortable because of all the
Speaker 1: grammatical errors. But to the kids that didn't matter. And
Speaker 1: when I went to school next Monday, everybody talked about
Speaker 1: SETEGI would you say that Suchegin Boys, that that first
Speaker 1: TV appearance was that like the beginning for modern I
Speaker 1: should say that. Still I cannot say that it is
Speaker 1: the the hip hop, but still they were the one
Speaker 1: who introduced rap in Korea. Rap hadn't developed into its
Speaker 1: own genrees yet. It was more like some musicians would
Speaker 1: occasionally wrap just to add some flavor to their pop songs.
Speaker 1: I mean, even Celtegian Boys didn't fully lean into hip
Speaker 1: hop until the third album, which came out a few
Speaker 1: years later. It was the groups that came out after,
Speaker 1: like Drunken Tiger, Dynamic Duo, and Epic High that would
Speaker 1: really shape what we now think of as the early
Speaker 1: Korean hip hop scene. But even into the early two thousand's,
Speaker 1: this was all still pretty underground. Rappers were mostly just
Speaker 1: a bunch of fanatic kids, and nobody thought that hip
Speaker 1: hop would ever be mainstream in Korea. Whenever I ask
Speaker 1: anyone about where it all started. For Tableau, for Epic High,
Speaker 1: and for Korean hip hop in general, one place always
Speaker 1: comes up, Hung Day. Hung Days the name for a
Speaker 1: neighborhood that's around hung Nic University, and in the early
Speaker 1: two thou it was the hip hangout for young people
Speaker 1: who were into art and music alright, one to to
Speaker 1: check one two one two. During the daytime, Hung Day
Speaker 1: looked like any other college area, small cafes, boutique shops,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. But at night, the local pubs,
Speaker 1: bars and clubs transformed the neighborhood. The central gathering points
Speaker 1: was this neighborhood, and also specifically there was most of
Speaker 1: the nightlife targeted young college kids, so the drinks were cheap,
Speaker 1: the music was loud, and a lot of the clubs
Speaker 1: were literally underground. I remember Master Planned. On the weekdays
Speaker 1: they have rock music performance when the weekend was I
Speaker 1: think hip hop. This is ju Choy, but people in
Speaker 1: the hip hop scene call him j Win, So I
Speaker 1: just added Win because among all this Jay, I'm the winners. Win.
Speaker 1: J Win introduced Epic Hi to each other and he
Speaker 1: produced their first album. But before that he was one
Speaker 1: of the o G producers in the scene, and he
Speaker 1: was always on the lookout for new talent in hung Day.
Speaker 1: So at that time there's a hip hop live club
Speaker 1: called master Plan in Soul. That's the underground hip hop
Speaker 1: live club where Korean hip hop underground rappers who are
Speaker 1: performing every weekend at that time for underground mcs. Their
Speaker 1: dream is to perform at master Plan. If you were
Speaker 1: into hip hop at this time, you were an outsider.
Speaker 1: To the outsiders, there weren't a lot of places for
Speaker 1: you to go, even in hung Day. So all the rappers,
Speaker 1: the DJs, the break dancers, they went to master Plan,
Speaker 1: not just to hang out, but to prove themselves. They
Speaker 1: took it seriously. There. Master Plan was the place for
Speaker 1: hip hop. Have you been in the neighborhood where master
Speaker 1: Plan was recently, No Richard and a twenty years on,
Speaker 1: the neighborhood has changed a lot. That grimmy underground vibe
Speaker 1: is pretty much gone. It's a lot more commercial now.
Speaker 1: There's expensive restaurants and franchise stores and master Plan closed
Speaker 1: a long time ago. The building where it used to
Speaker 1: be still exists, but now it's more of a multipurpose
Speaker 1: event space. One of the few things that hasn't changed
Speaker 1: is the spot across the street. I really want to
Speaker 1: visit there because there's a favorite restaurant we always it
Speaker 1: after a performance. Is it the one right across the street, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: right in front of the Yet it's called I think Yet,
Speaker 1: I think. Okay, let's see. Yeah. So if you look
Speaker 1: on the wall here, you can see there's all these
Speaker 1: different people with signs, stuff from whatnot. The restaurant is
Speaker 1: really tiny. The owner is this older woman who didn't
Speaker 1: want to be interviewed, but she was down to talk
Speaker 1: to us. She seemed kind of confused about why we
Speaker 1: were asking about this club that had closed down so
Speaker 1: long ago. I asked her if she knew who Epic
Speaker 1: High was, and she said she did, and as a
Speaker 1: matter of fact, she had pictures of them taped up
Speaker 1: on the wall in the back. Right here at the top,
Speaker 1: there's table with this like I said, this got like
Speaker 1: a run DMC, kind of big brimmed hat like Pharrell
Speaker 1: of Epic High. The members signed paper. Yeah yeah you
Speaker 1: gotta go back, man. Yeah, she's got she's got stuff
Speaker 1: from everybody. Yeah, my god, I should go there. I
Speaker 1: really missed that place. I remember like every time we
Speaker 1: were waiting outside. Could better we're you're so you know,
Speaker 1: shaky because it's so cold. And then she always told
Speaker 1: us like, hey, come inside, you just take back here.
Speaker 1: What do they think of you? There are a bunch
Speaker 1: of hip hop kids coming in after the concert. I
Speaker 1: don't think she knows what we are doing. I don't
Speaker 1: think she knows what hip hoppies. I think she just
Speaker 1: treat us just kind of her grandson. Do you remember
Speaker 1: when you first met Tablow? Where were you? Oh? What? Regin,
Speaker 1: whose real name is Jin Choi, is the other m
Speaker 1: C and epic Hi. He says when he first met
Speaker 1: Tableau in a hotel lobby, He's been expecting somebody who
Speaker 1: looked a little less nerdy. J Wynn had orchestrated the meetings.
Speaker 1: At the time, Tableau was still in college and he'd
Speaker 1: come home to Soul for the winter break, and he
Speaker 1: was wanting to see if maybe he could get signed
Speaker 1: in Korea. J wyn made table Will perform on the spot.
Speaker 1: He played him some beats and Tableau started rapping. One
Speaker 1: all of them was actually lesson ones uh originalal beat
Speaker 1: in the first album, and that was same lyrics of
Speaker 1: Lesson mark break out. Wow, What did you think? Because
Speaker 1: those are some pretty serious lyrics. Were you expecting that? No?
Speaker 1: In my mind, I was like, whoa, this guy's first
Speaker 1: serious right. I kind of like it, but I don't
Speaker 1: want to say, Oh, I like you. I like your
Speaker 1: wrap on the first day. Right. Tableau only wrapped in
Speaker 1: English back then, which was fine for the parties in California,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't going to cut it in Korea. So
Speaker 1: j Wynn told him, as soon as you go back
Speaker 1: to Stanford every week, you should record one or two
Speaker 1: songs in Korean lyrics and you should send me. So
Speaker 1: he did that I was fluent in Korean, but that
Speaker 1: my Korean writing was nowhere near the way I was
Speaker 1: writing in English. And also it's very different rapping in Korean.
Speaker 1: You know, I had less experience with that. So while
Speaker 1: Tabolo was still studying in Stanford to finish his last semester,
Speaker 1: DJ came to my home like once, so we junk said,
Speaker 1: Kim a k A d J two Cuts is the
Speaker 1: third member of Epic Chai. When I asked him how
Speaker 1: he became a DJ, he told me that he didn't
Speaker 1: really have any choice. He tried to wrap. When did
Speaker 1: you decide, Hey, maybe I want to start trying to
Speaker 1: DJ labor, but quickly realized that he wasn't any good
Speaker 1: at and out of four elements of hip hop, BBoy D,
Speaker 1: the all I just show you so boy, you don't get.
Speaker 1: The only thing he was good at was DJ. He
Speaker 1: kept at it and one day he met j Wynn
Speaker 1: through a mutual friend. J Wynn mentioned that he needed
Speaker 1: a DJ for a group he was trying to put together,
Speaker 1: and two Cuts said well, hey, I could DJ, So
Speaker 1: they started working together. Then in two thousand to Tabloo
Speaker 1: came back to Korea and they all formed a group
Speaker 1: and j Winn helped them get signed to a small label.
Speaker 1: The way they all tell it, they didn't really have
Speaker 1: high expectations for this thing. They were a bunch of
Speaker 1: inexperienced kids making music in a genre that almost nobody
Speaker 1: in Korea even listened to the music industry at this
Speaker 1: point was basically either mainstream pop ballads or this other
Speaker 1: thing that people were starting to call k pop. There
Speaker 1: wasn't any room for a bunch of dudes yelling over
Speaker 1: drums into a microphone. They didn't even figure out a
Speaker 1: name yet, so we were talking like a pig at
Speaker 1: pick at pig something at pig or just just keep
Speaker 1: you know, spit it out like at pick Fly, like
Speaker 1: something like that. Then one day Tabolo and iur sitting
Speaker 1: in the college and watching TV and they said I
Speaker 1: was like at Pig High. Oh my god. I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, yes, every card, that's how your name.
Speaker 1: Now they were officially a hip hop group. They had
Speaker 1: a name, a contract, and some things they wanted to
Speaker 1: wrap about, so they started recording. But pretty soon they
Speaker 1: realized that something wasn't right with their label. They figured
Speaker 1: out that this this contract was messed up. It wasn't
Speaker 1: just messed up in that they weren't getting paid well,
Speaker 1: and they weren't. I mean, they were getting about ten
Speaker 1: dollars per day for meals to split between the three
Speaker 1: of them in the most expensive city in Korea. But
Speaker 1: the problem was now we had to pay the bill
Speaker 1: for all the recording and everything, which is ridiculous because
Speaker 1: we really didn't have enough to eat. And Tableau's parents
Speaker 1: were not an option. They were still up in arms
Speaker 1: about the fact that I've finished up college and to
Speaker 1: do this that they didn't want me like living in
Speaker 1: their home, So now we have nowhere to live. I
Speaker 1: was living at one rapper's house and another rapper's house.
Speaker 1: Any friend that would have me, you just CouchSurfing at
Speaker 1: this point, Oh, it wasn't CouchSurfing. One guy that I
Speaker 1: was living with who's still great friends with me, he
Speaker 1: had a like an attic, uh, like where you climbed
Speaker 1: up a ladder and you opened the attic and a
Speaker 1: tiny space. He allowed me to stay there as long
Speaker 1: as his mom didn't find that. And I remember, like,
Speaker 1: just like some movie, like I would open the crack
Speaker 1: and they would be eating dinner, and I would open
Speaker 1: it because he smelled so good and I was so hungry,
Speaker 1: and it was like from some Disney movie or something
Speaker 1: where like I'm like hiding in this rich family's house
Speaker 1: and I'm hungry, and I'm just you know, that's just
Speaker 1: literally what what? What went on? For about a year,
Speaker 1: Epic High was stuck but at an album, but no
Speaker 1: one could hear it because the contract they were in
Speaker 1: so they couldn't release the record until they paid back
Speaker 1: their debt first, and none of them had that kind
Speaker 1: of money. I felt like I had completely fucked up
Speaker 1: my life, like on my own. The only way they
Speaker 1: could escape was if another label took them on and
Speaker 1: pay them out of that bad contract. But even then
Speaker 1: that would just mean they'd be in debt to someone else.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I was now in too deep,
Speaker 1: Like I had finished this album and I knew the
Speaker 1: album was good and there's no way I can just
Speaker 1: give up. But I was pretty much ready to Do
Speaker 1: you ever think about giving up? Yeah? I was like
Speaker 1: this might not pan out. I might have to live
Speaker 1: the lie, like become a lawyer. Oh my god. And
Speaker 1: then as I was ready to quit, I was drunk,
Speaker 1: passed out somewhere. I got a call and some company
Speaker 1: that I had never heard of wanted to talk to me,
Speaker 1: So I went in. They liked the album, they signed us,
Speaker 1: and literally put out the album and I think like
Speaker 1: two weeks. Map of the Human Soul was released in
Speaker 1: October of two three. Finally, after a year on the show,
Speaker 1: the world was gonna hear Epic Haigh's debut. In the
Speaker 1: hip hop scene, we became huge stars. There was this
Speaker 1: one hip hop like web scene where every hip hop
Speaker 1: kid would go to just you know, get Korean hip
Speaker 1: hop news and stuff, and they would have a yearly
Speaker 1: award thing and we like basically swept like best artists,
Speaker 1: best album, best whatever. Right, But mind you, this is
Speaker 1: a very small number of people at the time, right,
Speaker 1: this is like maybe at most ten thou people. And
Speaker 1: I know this because we sold ten thousand records. In
Speaker 1: mainstream terms, we had completely bombed. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: Epic Has first album wasn't doing great. We were winning
Speaker 1: this web scene award, but at the same time, like
Speaker 1: we were, you know, tutoring kids and like trying to
Speaker 1: survive and to make matters worse, they found themselves in
Speaker 1: another bad contract. Nothing had really changed because we just
Speaker 1: didn't get paid. They were all working multiple jobs trying
Speaker 1: to make ends meet. It didn't really matter because nobody
Speaker 1: recognized us. But they kept going, hoping that their second
Speaker 1: album would change things. Right after our second album came
Speaker 1: out and within a couple of days, I knew that
Speaker 1: this was gonna fall. WHOA, because you just know, you
Speaker 1: just feel it. You Mith told me that the second
Speaker 1: album did sell better than the first one. I didn't
Speaker 1: take one on the on the cold, but we're still
Speaker 1: talking in relative terms here, as in it sold well
Speaker 1: for an indie album in a niche genre, which hip
Speaker 1: hop was at the time, and the label wasn't really
Speaker 1: satisfied with that. They started working on the third album,
Speaker 1: but they knew that this one was probably their last.
Speaker 1: If this one didn't sell, they'd call it quits. That's
Speaker 1: quickly make our last album. But in the meantime, I
Speaker 1: have a little bit of a plan, and that's when
Speaker 1: I asked the thing. The thing was the taboo thing
Speaker 1: in hip hop going on TV, me appearing on a
Speaker 1: talk show during those times what equaled death in the
Speaker 1: hip hop scene. It was considered like a big no.
Speaker 1: Now says that at this point, the underground versus mainstream
Speaker 1: was a huge issue in the Korean scene. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's the classic hip hop debate. I remember this debate
Speaker 1: from when I was DJ in college radio in California
Speaker 1: back in the early two thousand's. A lot of us
Speaker 1: were kind of suspicious of anyone who got too popular,
Speaker 1: but we weren't going to boycott your records just because
Speaker 1: somebody interviewed you on TV. But hearing these guys describe it,
Speaker 1: it sounds like it was way harsher in Korea. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's because the scene was so small, but people were
Speaker 1: really serious about this stuff. Going on TV was proposes sellouts,
Speaker 1: was the opposite of hip hop. TV promotion was more
Speaker 1: a k pop's lane. At the time, we debuted with
Speaker 1: the most popular Korean k pop groups in history, Tombang
Speaker 1: Shingi TV XQ, literally possibly the most popular group ever
Speaker 1: in Korea before BTS, and that meant that when we
Speaker 1: went to perform at these this show like they wanted
Speaker 1: us off the stage, like as soon as possible if
Speaker 1: they didn't have a stomach for us. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: it just wasn't clicking because nobody wanted us on those shows.
Speaker 1: K pop has always been the bigger, flash year and
Speaker 1: more popular cousin to hip hop, but both genres have
Speaker 1: a history that's pretty deeply intertwined. When did k pop
Speaker 1: as we understand it even really start in Korea, It
Speaker 1: was when the very first K pop band, h O
Speaker 1: t Man Derek debut. There is a lot of debate
Speaker 1: about the exact time when modern day k pop came
Speaker 1: to be, but Utah Lie says that what we can
Speaker 1: say is that by the late nineties, around the same
Speaker 1: time as hip hop was emerging, k pop was already
Speaker 1: in the front seat and it was redefining what it
Speaker 1: meant to be mainstream music in Korea, h O T
Speaker 1: and S E S. We're dominating the Korean music charts.
Speaker 1: This was a programmatic move by a guy named Li
Speaker 1: su Mine, the founder of s M Entertainment. He spent
Speaker 1: some time in the US in the eighties, and he
Speaker 1: was amazed at what MTV was doing. He also took
Speaker 1: notes on some other successful industries, like the j pop
Speaker 1: music scene in Japan and America's motown formula. And it
Speaker 1: wasn't just music industries that he was inspired by. For
Speaker 1: decent that kind of factory music processing fdism. You're saying
Speaker 1: Fordism as in Ford Yeah, right, the did the car,
Speaker 1: that the automobile factory, that the labor, the work is
Speaker 1: clearly divided to each one, just like the motor company,
Speaker 1: you know. And he combined this all together and he
Speaker 1: came up with a sort of factory model for music.
Speaker 1: It worked really well until about the early two thousands.
Speaker 1: Some of the idol band even complained it as a
Speaker 1: slight contract. The biggest K pop idols started to realize
Speaker 1: that the deals they'd signed into weren't all that great,
Speaker 1: and the general public realized that a lot of those
Speaker 1: idols weren't all that talented. That they did not do
Speaker 1: their live performance well on the stage, they only danced
Speaker 1: to the music. So a lot of casual fans started
Speaker 1: to get disillusioned with K pop and this left a
Speaker 1: gap for other genres of music to come in. Also,
Speaker 1: Epicai really came at just the right time. Yes, but
Speaker 1: it was very coincidence because actually that was the very
Speaker 1: period for many Hippan musicians, Dynamic Duo, Drunken Tiger and
Speaker 1: the Epicai at that time. Yes, there was a room
Speaker 1: for that. I get this butt to your second album
Speaker 1: where you're you're almost having to explain the people what
Speaker 1: hip hop is and here's how we're going to do it. Oh,
Speaker 1: it goes beyond that. Really, basically interviews were really boring
Speaker 1: to them because I was giving lectures about like how
Speaker 1: graffiti played a role in it, how b boing played
Speaker 1: a role, like you know, two cuts had to break down,
Speaker 1: like why djaying matters like Herbie Hancock, and like it's
Speaker 1: just like everything had to be a lesson to just
Speaker 1: simply introduce what we do for our living. It's not
Speaker 1: our music, but it has grown into something that we
Speaker 1: can identify with and that we can you know, turn
Speaker 1: into something that we can express our own thoughts and
Speaker 1: voices through right, but this was an entire population that
Speaker 1: was not, you know, they just had never been exposed
Speaker 1: to it. Epicai spent years patiently explaining hip hop on
Speaker 1: any TV show that would have them, all the while
Speaker 1: competing with K pop for stage time, and it really
Speaker 1: wasn't until two thousand five, with the release of the
Speaker 1: third album that anyone started paying attention. Part of that
Speaker 1: new attention was because Tableau was everywhere doing the TV thing.
Speaker 1: The other part was because in this album they started
Speaker 1: incorporating influences from K pop, and since that genre was
Speaker 1: already made stream, it was a little easier for people
Speaker 1: to adjust to Epicai sound. So it was only natural
Speaker 1: that when their third album was released, they were bona
Speaker 1: fide superstars. But it wasn't all love. Hip hop heads
Speaker 1: accused them of selling out to K pop for mainstream approval.
Speaker 1: Their fourth album did get some hip hop fans back
Speaker 1: on their side because they went back to the core,
Speaker 1: underground sound, but that record was censored by the Korean government.
Speaker 1: Some of the songs dealt with things like sex crimes, war, education,
Speaker 1: and religion, and songs that talked about these kind of
Speaker 1: social issues were banned from playing on the radio. This
Speaker 1: would usually be a bad thing, but not for a
Speaker 1: hip hop group. Epic High getting censored actually probably helped
Speaker 1: them rebuild their street crib with that core hip hop audience,
Speaker 1: because it let their fans know that Epic High wasn't
Speaker 1: just about the fame. They were about the messaging, the
Speaker 1: things they were saying and doing. So people started paying
Speaker 1: more attention to them with the release of their fis
Speaker 1: and the sixth albums, but not all the attention was positive.
Speaker 1: If you get a lot of fans, you're gonna get
Speaker 1: a few haters, and pretty soon those haters would find
Speaker 1: an opportunity in the Tajo scandal was making national headlines.
Speaker 1: Things started coming offline into the real world. Tableau was
Speaker 1: now getting death threats and being accosted by strangers in
Speaker 1: the streets. I don't know how they got through to me,
Speaker 1: but someone threatened to kill me, my wife, and my
Speaker 1: daughter if we didn't get out of the country. And
Speaker 1: almost overnight, he'd gone from being a beloved symbol of
Speaker 1: success in Korea to one of the most hated people
Speaker 1: in the country. You know how people think that, like
Speaker 1: you know, like hey, don't think about the comments. They
Speaker 1: don't worry about the comments. Don't don't read the comments.
Speaker 1: That's not real, you know, that's detached from reality. All
Speaker 1: you gotta do is turn your computer off. Dude, just unpluged, logout, man,
Speaker 1: and you're fine. I gotta say, like the experience I had,
Speaker 1: it wasn't detached. You know, people were threatening me online.
Speaker 1: I tried to turn it off, but in the real
Speaker 1: world it still happened like it was connected. It had
Speaker 1: been a month since the Tagino message board had started.
Speaker 1: Tableau had stopped going outside. It wasn't safe to leave
Speaker 1: his house anymore. Tableau had released his transcript, thinking that
Speaker 1: this would fix everything. A few hours later after the
Speaker 1: article came out, when I learned that that was not
Speaker 1: going to be the case. That people were not accepting
Speaker 1: these documents as real. They were saying my diploma was doctored.
Speaker 1: They were saying the transcript was fake. Tanjano was looking
Speaker 1: at every detail of that transcript in calling everyone and
Speaker 1: anyone associated with Stanford to confirm details. No one believed
Speaker 1: that just being in Korea started to feel so dangerous
Speaker 1: that Tabou left the country with his wife and his baby,
Speaker 1: who was still only a few weeks old. First they
Speaker 1: went to Japan and then Hawaii. He tried not to
Speaker 1: think about it for a while. He knew that sometimes
Speaker 1: weird stuff just takes a while to blow over. After
Speaker 1: a month, he figured it'd be safe to go back
Speaker 1: to Korea. And I actually hadn't been looking at the
Speaker 1: internet for a while because well, obviously, right then he
Speaker 1: looked at his phone. And then I realized that it
Speaker 1: had now spread to my family, like it had become
Speaker 1: a campaign against my family. I realized that it got
Speaker 1: it had gotten to a point where I now had
Speaker 1: no choice but to fight. Isn't this point There were
Speaker 1: also people calling and contacting the broadcasting stations saying that
Speaker 1: like I should get fired. I didn't really go to
Speaker 1: Stanford either, This was already happening. Yeah, Sean Limb worked
Speaker 1: as a broadcast journalist in Korea. He also happened to
Speaker 1: be good friends with Tableau from their days back at Stanford.
Speaker 1: They were trying to attack everybody who was associated with Tableau,
Speaker 1: and you talk about Dock saying they're really good. What's
Speaker 1: the worst that it got for you? I think it
Speaker 1: was like a lot of hate messages on our company
Speaker 1: website or show website. People calling the station, what kind
Speaker 1: of hate messages? What were people saying? Some would be
Speaker 1: just cursing someone's saying like things about Tableau. Someone say
Speaker 1: like I think they would be like even judging my appearance,
Speaker 1: or are like you know, saying like they're the same
Speaker 1: type of people who you know. They found all of us.
Speaker 1: I didn't buy any of the yearbooks at Stanford, and
Speaker 1: I regretted it because I didn't have any of the pictures.
Speaker 1: But they found all the pictures and scanned it and
Speaker 1: put it online so I was able to have them.
Speaker 1: So there are some pictures of me and Dan. Those
Speaker 1: pictures are from when Sean and Dan Lee a k a.
Speaker 1: Tableau both lived in the dorms at Stanford. They stayed
Speaker 1: in contact over the years, and as the scandal was
Speaker 1: getting bigger, Tabloo contacted Sean and asked if they could meet.
Speaker 1: He was having I think a bit of psychosis. He
Speaker 1: was kind of also detaching from reality because he was
Speaker 1: seeing it so much that he started to doubt whether
Speaker 1: he actually went to Stamford himself. And I thought that
Speaker 1: to get to that stage, did he tell you that, yeah? Wow?
Speaker 1: Would you think when he said that. I thought when
Speaker 1: he said that, are you being dramatic or this is
Speaker 1: what can really happen? And then he was getting to
Speaker 1: the point where like trying to ask me, like what
Speaker 1: I do? An interview for him for NBC, which is
Speaker 1: one of the main TV outlets here. NBC, a huge
Speaker 1: broadcasting network in Korea, had proposed a major documentary project.
Speaker 1: They would physically fly with a news crew out to
Speaker 1: California to visit Stanford with Tableau. They'd go to the
Speaker 1: school and talk to the administrators directly. If Tableau was lying,
Speaker 1: they were going to get to the bottom in person.
Speaker 1: Tableau accepted and they flew out in August. Meanwhile, Tajno
Speaker 1: was continuing to grow. The documentary spends time talking to administrators,
Speaker 1: former students, and even some of Tableau's old professors. An
Speaker 1: impostor I'm I'm the real Tobia Swelf okay. They also
Speaker 1: found old videos of Tableau hanging out with his friends
Speaker 1: and the sandwich Man Sandwich. Up until this point, all
Speaker 1: the news about Tableau had been piecemeal, a report about
Speaker 1: Tableau's transcript here or a news article about toddy nose
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories there. I was watching the documentary with my
Speaker 1: mom again. She was like, why is this happening? This
Speaker 1: is hey On Park. She is a major epic high
Speaker 1: fan for her and most of Korea. When this two
Speaker 1: part documentary aired in October, it was the first to
Speaker 1: really lay out in one place everything that was going on.
Speaker 1: And I couldn't answer her, you know, because I wasn't
Speaker 1: sure what was going on because none of us, none
Speaker 1: of us in this country, have seen a cyber bullying
Speaker 1: case this big, and it was on a channel that
Speaker 1: almost everyone in Korea watched. For some the documentary made
Speaker 1: it clear the tableau had been telling the truth the
Speaker 1: whole time. It also helped that it was made by
Speaker 1: a respected national news outlet, But for others, it was motivated.
Speaker 1: Within one day of the documentary airing, the form doubled
Speaker 1: in size to almost two hundred thousand members. Now it
Speaker 1: was clear this wasn't ending anytime soon. I checked the
Speaker 1: Internet and now it had become a campaign against my brother,
Speaker 1: my sister, and my mom and dad. So when I
Speaker 1: got back and I was like, oh my god, and
Speaker 1: not only is persisting, it's gotten like much worse. That's
Speaker 1: next time on Authentic. Authentic is a production of Vice
Speaker 1: Audio and I Heeart Podcast Network. Produced and reported by
Speaker 1: Stephanie Karayuki, Minji Coo, Kate Osbourne and myself with Janet Lee,
Speaker 1: Stephanie Brown, and Sam Egan. Sound design and original music
Speaker 1: composition by Kyle Murdoch, with additional support from Natasha Jacobs.
Speaker 1: Our supervising producer is Janet Lee, editing from Lacey Roberts,
Speaker 1: fact checking by Minji Ku and Nicole Pasulka. Our executive
Speaker 1: producer and VP of Vice Audio is Kate Osbourne from
Speaker 1: iHeart Podcast Network. Executive producers Nikki e Tor and Lindsay Hoffman.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Isne Bobo Nooiette for Epic HAI's original
Speaker 1: concert footage. This episode features Epicai music from their album
Speaker 1: Map of the Human Soul, distributed by c J Music
Speaker 1: Music also from Sotegian Boys. Thanks also to MBC for
Speaker 1: their documentary tableaugoes to Stanford. I'm Dexter Thomas. Make sure
Speaker 1: to subscribe wherever you get your podcast so you don't
Speaker 1: miss an episode, and if you dig it, give us
Speaker 1: a rating and a review, and don't forget to check
Speaker 1: us out on Twitter and Instagram at Vice News