WEBVTT - Hell Korea 0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:07.640 Do you remember when you first heard about tableau scandal? Oh? Yes, yes, 0:00:08.200 --> 0:00:12.120 And I was like, whoa, what's happening? What's happening with 0:00:12.200 --> 0:00:17.200 you know, our minds because I didn't give a time 0:00:17.239 --> 0:00:20.960 about where he graduated from. He was just a good guy. 0:00:21.200 --> 0:00:24.360 He was a good rapper, he was a good writer, 0:00:24.600 --> 0:00:30.360 he was a good entertainer. Who cares? Ah where Let's say, like, um, 0:00:30.480 --> 0:00:35.400 do you know where she graduated? You know, nobody cares. 0:00:35.560 --> 0:00:39.560 It's a waste of your precious time. I met j 0:00:39.680 --> 0:00:43.479 Young Park in one of Soul's oldest neighborhoods, Guangamon, on 0:00:43.560 --> 0:00:46.200 this narrow back street that was lying with coffee shops. 0:00:47.080 --> 0:00:50.240 The street itself was pretty noisy, but his friend happens 0:00:50.280 --> 0:00:52.360 to run a yoga studio that wasn't open that day, 0:00:52.680 --> 0:00:55.360 so we went in there to talk. Jean is an 0:00:55.440 --> 0:00:58.520 art curator. He also went to an elite university in Korea, 0:00:58.720 --> 0:01:00.400 so I figured he would be a good person to 0:01:00.480 --> 0:01:03.320 talk to about the obsession with brand names and education. 0:01:03.680 --> 0:01:06.240 But when I asked him about the Tableau scandal, he 0:01:06.440 --> 0:01:09.919 started laughing, which I kind of had to laugh along 0:01:09.959 --> 0:01:13.400 with him because it made me realize again that yeah, 0:01:13.800 --> 0:01:16.520 this is all sort of ridiculous, I mean, being real. 0:01:16.920 --> 0:01:21.120 When I first heard about all this, I kind of thought, wait, what, 0:01:21.600 --> 0:01:25.480 why does anyone care about where a rapper went to college? 0:01:25.880 --> 0:01:27.800 I mean, you're you're you're laughing about this, but and 0:01:27.920 --> 0:01:30.839 I'm we're laughing about this now. But this was completely 0:01:30.880 --> 0:01:34.040 dominating in Korean society. I mean, again, this is hip 0:01:34.040 --> 0:01:36.400 hop we're talking about. Even if you're not a fan 0:01:36.440 --> 0:01:38.640 of the music, you know that in hip hop we 0:01:38.760 --> 0:01:43.360 prized street cred above pretty much everything, and Stanford is 0:01:43.400 --> 0:01:45.800 not where you get street cred. That's not to say 0:01:45.880 --> 0:01:48.920 rappers don't lie. They do, but it's usually in the 0:01:48.960 --> 0:01:51.720 opposite direction, like saying they're from the hood or they're 0:01:51.720 --> 0:01:54.640 in a gang or something like that. But lying about 0:01:54.760 --> 0:01:58.640 being an elite university graduate that just sounds like hustling 0:01:58.680 --> 0:02:01.080 backwards to me. There there were a lot of really 0:02:01.080 --> 0:02:08.600 angry people. People war and are generally very angry, very 0:02:08.720 --> 0:02:13.160 angry about other people. What do you mean if you 0:02:13.600 --> 0:02:18.400 are a Korean citizen, you would totally understand what I 0:02:18.480 --> 0:02:22.640 have just said. But we are very angry at all times. 0:02:23.440 --> 0:02:26.360 We are angry. We are angry at the president. You know, 0:02:26.760 --> 0:02:29.440 we take out the president because we are angry at 0:02:29.440 --> 0:02:33.360 the president. You know, we are very angry at Japan, 0:02:33.480 --> 0:02:38.200 for example, So we always have to win over Japan. 0:02:38.440 --> 0:02:41.959 It's engraved in our way of thinking for the last 0:02:43.200 --> 0:02:46.960 half a century that we have to be really angry 0:02:47.560 --> 0:02:55.959 to achieve because if we remain without anger, our opportunities, 0:02:56.040 --> 0:03:01.200 our resource, maybe our country or freedom are being taken away. 0:03:06.320 --> 0:03:10.600 It's that anger, that emotion, and even the absurdity of 0:03:10.600 --> 0:03:13.440 the situation. With Tableau that may be interested in all this, 0:03:14.120 --> 0:03:17.120 they maybe want to know more what made an entire 0:03:17.240 --> 0:03:20.960 country gets swept up into this frenzy? What drove it 0:03:21.000 --> 0:03:25.080 to the point of criminal charges? With all that smoke? 0:03:25.760 --> 0:03:31.120 Where's the fire and who or what started? But like 0:03:31.240 --> 0:03:39.280 with everything in life, there's a context here, a background history. 0:03:40.840 --> 0:03:43.120 What figs my name? Whatever? I can be drum I 0:03:43.120 --> 0:03:46.160 can I can writing there. My book runs on the 0:03:46.200 --> 0:03:58.480 first past the mark Yeah, a boon box boat from 0:03:58.600 --> 0:04:02.840 Vice and I heart I'm Dexter Thomas. This is authentic 0:04:04.240 --> 0:04:14.600 episode four Hell career. Where was this? I rarely spick 0:04:14.680 --> 0:04:18.280 up rich University. You know I was in because I 0:04:18.320 --> 0:04:20.920 am aware of this issue that when I first sat 0:04:20.960 --> 0:04:23.839 down with j Young, my first thought was and I 0:04:23.880 --> 0:04:27.640 mean this in the most genuine way. I swear this 0:04:27.720 --> 0:04:31.960 dude is just unfairly cool. I mean shoes, his outfit, 0:04:32.200 --> 0:04:34.920 his glasses. He looks like the kind of dude who 0:04:34.920 --> 0:04:37.640 could talk philosophy with you but then also tell you 0:04:37.680 --> 0:04:40.600 a place to get some new kicks. At first, it 0:04:40.720 --> 0:04:43.520 was just small talk. I was asking about himself, and 0:04:43.680 --> 0:04:47.440 everything was fine until I asked him about school. I 0:04:47.480 --> 0:04:49.839 had to actually press him to say where it was 0:04:49.880 --> 0:04:52.159 that he went to college. I mean, I think he 0:04:52.160 --> 0:04:55.320 almost started blushing when I when I say that, you know, 0:04:55.360 --> 0:04:59.919 I graduated from university in Korea, you know, to be specific, 0:05:00.080 --> 0:05:04.840 probably ah, you know, ah, you know, you have a background. 0:05:05.480 --> 0:05:07.359 It's a good school. Kind of yeah, it's a good school. 0:05:07.400 --> 0:05:10.040 But what I don't really want to the fact that 0:05:10.120 --> 0:05:17.480 I graduated from this school with multiple degrees affects people's judgments, 0:05:17.920 --> 0:05:22.400 you know, on me as a person. Interesting. It's very 0:05:22.440 --> 0:05:26.560 ironic because I want to let people know that I 0:05:26.600 --> 0:05:31.760 am really serious into studying and researching different stuff. But 0:05:31.800 --> 0:05:34.040 at the same time, I don't really want to, you know, 0:05:34.640 --> 0:05:37.360 wave the flag that you know I got this thing. 0:05:38.240 --> 0:05:43.960 So it's really twisted desire. The reason I was talking 0:05:44.000 --> 0:05:48.200 to Jayong wasn't really about Tableau specifically. It was because 0:05:48.240 --> 0:05:51.200 of a totally different scandal, something that happened around the 0:05:51.240 --> 0:05:53.280 time Jayong was getting out of school with his own 0:05:53.320 --> 0:05:56.240 multiple degrees and breaking into the art world in two 0:05:56.240 --> 0:05:59.120 thousand seven, which was a couple of years before what 0:05:59.160 --> 0:06:01.880 happened with table If you talk to enough people in 0:06:01.960 --> 0:06:05.279 Korea about Tableau, at some point someone will point out 0:06:05.279 --> 0:06:07.200 that it's kind of like what happened with this really 0:06:07.200 --> 0:06:11.159 prestigious art curator named Shin jong A. And when someone 0:06:11.240 --> 0:06:14.120 explained that to me, things not only started to make 0:06:14.120 --> 0:06:18.520 more sense, but it actually made Tableau story a lot scarier. 0:06:19.120 --> 0:06:21.800 I wanted to talk to an expert, somebody who knew 0:06:21.800 --> 0:06:25.239 Shinjunga's story. But when we were looking for someone to interview, 0:06:25.640 --> 0:06:27.600 someone who was in the art world at that time 0:06:27.680 --> 0:06:30.400 and could really paint the picture of how devastating her 0:06:30.400 --> 0:06:34.719 story was, almost no one wanted to talk, which is 0:06:34.839 --> 0:06:38.560 weird because this was a national case. It was so 0:06:38.640 --> 0:06:41.800 big that people called it shin Gate, as in shinjong 0:06:41.920 --> 0:06:45.600 A and Gate, because Koreans also used gate from Watergate 0:06:45.680 --> 0:06:48.960 like we do for big scandals. But even though this 0:06:49.040 --> 0:06:52.800 was all public knowledge, nobody seemed to want to talk 0:06:52.800 --> 0:06:59.080 about it. I guess the reason why, especially the arts people, 0:06:59.279 --> 0:07:03.400 is that I don't know, maybe people there's a general 0:07:03.960 --> 0:07:09.120 maybe consensus that we don't talk that ship about ourselves. 0:07:09.160 --> 0:07:12.320 But j Young is kind of a rebel, so he 0:07:12.400 --> 0:07:14.960 was down to give us the context. I think in 0:07:15.000 --> 0:07:21.120 the art board people or generally remained silent about it 0:07:21.240 --> 0:07:25.240 because she was a curator at all a prestigious, you know, 0:07:25.640 --> 0:07:31.440 private museum, and she was about to curate a section 0:07:32.080 --> 0:07:37.520 of the Contrivinale, which is like a really really important, 0:07:38.240 --> 0:07:42.200 you know position, or anyone. In the early two thousand's, 0:07:42.200 --> 0:07:45.120 Shinjanga was a rising star in the Korean art world. 0:07:45.800 --> 0:07:48.560 She had become the lead curator of an art museum 0:07:48.560 --> 0:07:51.680 and soul she was a professor at a local university, 0:07:52.240 --> 0:07:54.680 and she had ties to the office of the then 0:07:54.840 --> 0:07:59.160 Korean president, and only thirty five years old, she had 0:07:59.160 --> 0:08:02.480 been appointed as director of the Kuangju Bien l which 0:08:02.600 --> 0:08:05.560 is one of the most acclaimed art events in Asia. 0:08:06.520 --> 0:08:10.240 Shinjunga wasn't just a success story. She was a role model. 0:08:12.120 --> 0:08:15.120 But then in the summer of two thousand seven, members 0:08:15.120 --> 0:08:18.880 of the board of Reuniversity started questioning her academic record. 0:08:19.840 --> 0:08:23.480 An entire television program was done to investigate her, and 0:08:23.520 --> 0:08:26.560 even though she insisted that her records were true, it 0:08:26.640 --> 0:08:30.720 was revealed that she had fabricated her resume. She had 0:08:30.760 --> 0:08:33.559 been lying about receiving a bachelor's from the University of 0:08:33.640 --> 0:08:38.760 Kansas and a pH d from Yale University. Shinjunga was 0:08:38.840 --> 0:08:42.440 fired from all of her positions, and then she was 0:08:42.480 --> 0:08:46.440 convicted of falsifying records and she ended up serving time 0:08:46.440 --> 0:08:50.520 in prison for that. I asked j Young what he 0:08:50.600 --> 0:08:54.439 thought of that punishment. Ah, that's a complicated issue like 0:08:54.679 --> 0:08:57.880 all the other issues in the Korean society that I 0:08:57.920 --> 0:09:02.640 think was like, um, like a showcase example of you know, 0:09:02.760 --> 0:09:05.880 if you funk with the system, we're gonna punish you. 0:09:06.200 --> 0:09:11.280 Her scandal set off a nationwide wave of allegations, investigations, 0:09:11.280 --> 0:09:15.400 and confessions of diploma fraud, and then a massive crackdown 0:09:15.520 --> 0:09:18.959 on credential forgery. For a while, it seemed like everyone 0:09:19.080 --> 0:09:23.400 was accusing everyone of credential forgery, which seems ridiculous except 0:09:23.440 --> 0:09:26.040 that a bunch of those cases ended up being true. 0:09:27.000 --> 0:09:32.560 Hundreds of people were investigated, celebrities, soldiers, government officials, ended 0:09:32.600 --> 0:09:36.920 up confessing to forging their credentials. Even a prominent Buddhist 0:09:36.960 --> 0:09:39.920 monk was exposed for having lied about where he went 0:09:39.960 --> 0:09:47.280 to school. I think that case just fully satisfied people's 0:09:47.480 --> 0:09:50.880 fantasy that people in the art word are like that 0:09:52.320 --> 0:09:56.719 they are either highly educated or trying to post themselves 0:09:56.760 --> 0:10:01.240 as highly educated. I think it happens at not only 0:10:01.320 --> 0:10:06.800 in Korea, but in Korea, maybe the intensity is much 0:10:06.880 --> 0:10:12.360 much higher than you might expect. Shin Junga became a symbol. 0:10:13.280 --> 0:10:15.840 She was guilty of lying and was now the poster 0:10:15.960 --> 0:10:20.640 child for fraud. But she also confirms something something that 0:10:20.720 --> 0:10:24.840 people already thought, that the elites are getting over on 0:10:24.920 --> 0:10:29.719 the rest of us, that everything, the entire society, it's 0:10:29.760 --> 0:10:33.360 all rigged, and then all of us we have to work. 0:10:33.920 --> 0:10:37.200 But them, the people with connections, they can do whatever 0:10:37.240 --> 0:10:39.760 they want. They don't even have to earn their degrees. 0:10:40.320 --> 0:10:43.920 This isn't a new idea, and it's not even particularly Korean, 0:10:44.760 --> 0:10:47.800 but there is a particular interpretation of this that's a 0:10:47.800 --> 0:10:51.800 little more prominent in Korean culture, especially recently over the 0:10:51.840 --> 0:10:54.640 past few years. It's almost kind of a meme that's 0:10:54.679 --> 0:10:58.800 caught on among younger people. Hell Korea or hand Korea 0:10:59.000 --> 0:11:06.280 or like people jokingly it's aself, that depreciating term to 0:11:06.480 --> 0:11:11.800 describe one's home country, which is Korea as hell, like 0:11:11.880 --> 0:11:15.000 living in Korea is like living in a hell. I 0:11:15.080 --> 0:11:19.520 agree that Korea is a hellish place to live. To 0:11:19.600 --> 0:11:24.040 be honest, it's a highly competitive and there's a lot 0:11:24.040 --> 0:11:28.920 of social pressure, economic pressure, and so many um brutal 0:11:29.280 --> 0:11:33.880 things happening. It's very misogynistic, I must say, it's not inclusive. 0:11:35.440 --> 0:11:40.679 Sometimes I imagine myself as a being a foreigner in 0:11:40.720 --> 0:11:46.120 this country, and then everything looks so interesting, like so 0:11:46.200 --> 0:11:51.760 funny if I if I was a foreigner, the only 0:11:51.880 --> 0:11:55.439 bad thing is that I'm actually a Korean citizen who's 0:11:55.480 --> 0:11:59.559 living in this is actually I think that's what makes 0:12:00.080 --> 0:12:06.760 Korean very interesting, dynamic place. People say like her duos 0:12:06.840 --> 0:12:11.400 on mhm, which is like hell Korea. I've never liked 0:12:11.480 --> 0:12:15.800 that phrase, um because you know, it singles out Korea 0:12:16.120 --> 0:12:20.160 as a possible hell. You know, it puts it puts 0:12:20.360 --> 0:12:25.000 that word on a on this whole country, which which 0:12:25.080 --> 0:12:29.480 I really detest um because it's not it's not a 0:12:29.520 --> 0:12:32.960 Korean problem. Is it's not a Korea problem. It's a 0:12:32.960 --> 0:12:37.720 it's a modern problem. It's hellish everywhere, right to different 0:12:37.720 --> 0:12:41.679 degrees in different um, you know, but it's hell pretty 0:12:41.760 --> 0:12:47.719 much everywhere. It's there's it's not easy anywhere. But I'm 0:12:47.800 --> 0:12:52.520 just worry of any umbrella terms, especially ones that are 0:12:52.600 --> 0:12:57.280 so damaging to our identities as Korean. On paper, South 0:12:57.360 --> 0:13:02.120 Korea looks like an incredible economic success story, and it is. 0:13:02.880 --> 0:13:05.840 It went from a war torn, impoverished country into a 0:13:05.880 --> 0:13:09.480 global powerhouse in the top ten largest economies in the 0:13:09.520 --> 0:13:12.800 world over the space of a few decades. It was 0:13:12.840 --> 0:13:16.160 only about seven years ago that the Korean War divided 0:13:16.200 --> 0:13:19.360 the country into two halves. That might sound like a 0:13:19.400 --> 0:13:22.880 long time ago from the outside, but in Korea that 0:13:22.920 --> 0:13:26.640 memory is pretty fresh. The war was devastating. Um it's 0:13:26.640 --> 0:13:32.760 an understatement, you know. It tore our country apart. My dad, uh, 0:13:33.160 --> 0:13:37.680 you know, he grew well, he was an orphan, so 0:13:39.000 --> 0:13:42.360 he had a really tough his whole life. Tableau doesn't 0:13:42.400 --> 0:13:46.280 know what happened to his grandparents, His family doesn't talk 0:13:46.320 --> 0:13:49.440 about it. But for him to have gotten to the 0:13:49.480 --> 0:13:52.720 point where we were living in a fairly you know, 0:13:52.960 --> 0:13:56.680 fairly middle class apartment by the time my brother was born, 0:13:57.360 --> 0:14:01.520 and then a little bigger every time until I was born. 0:14:01.800 --> 0:14:04.520 I can only imagine how how hard he hustled and 0:14:04.600 --> 0:14:08.280 how how much he struggled. He had to like take 0:14:08.480 --> 0:14:14.440 leaps to get a couple of steps up. Tablow's father 0:14:14.679 --> 0:14:17.320 is like a lot of immigrant parents just looking for 0:14:17.400 --> 0:14:20.480 something better for their child. That parents definition of better 0:14:20.840 --> 0:14:24.280 is based on their past history, and Tablew's father's history 0:14:24.360 --> 0:14:26.960 is intertwined with the way Korea came to be as 0:14:26.960 --> 0:14:29.560 we know it today. There's no way that I could 0:14:29.560 --> 0:14:32.800 explain the entirety of modern Korean history here, but the 0:14:32.840 --> 0:14:34.960 short version is that there's a lot of things in 0:14:35.000 --> 0:14:38.280 the background. One of those things is how South Korea 0:14:38.360 --> 0:14:40.960 went from a poor, war torn country in the nineteen 0:14:41.040 --> 0:14:45.040 sixties to an economic powerhouse all in the space of 0:14:45.080 --> 0:14:49.200 a few decades. After the war, the Korean government invested 0:14:49.240 --> 0:14:53.040 heavily into educational infrastructure. At the same time, they were 0:14:53.040 --> 0:14:57.760 pumping relief funds and extremely favorable loans into certain businesses 0:14:58.040 --> 0:15:01.680 that would commit to rebuilding the country. The plan worked 0:15:01.960 --> 0:15:06.160 and the economy soared, but Korea also ended up with 0:15:06.240 --> 0:15:11.160 powerful conglomerates run by incredibly rich families. You've definitely heard 0:15:11.160 --> 0:15:16.800 of them, Samsung, Hyundai, l g those sorts. In Korea, 0:15:16.920 --> 0:15:21.119 they call these powerful dynasties chibbles, which basically just translates 0:15:21.120 --> 0:15:25.440 out to the phrase rich families. So when a massive 0:15:25.520 --> 0:15:29.440 financial crisis hit Korea hard in the nineties and jobs 0:15:29.480 --> 0:15:33.040 became scarce, but those rich families seem to be doing 0:15:33.120 --> 0:15:38.680 just fine, it exposed something that people already knew that 0:15:38.720 --> 0:15:42.880 there was an increasingly unfair hierarchy between the halves and 0:15:42.920 --> 0:15:46.480 the have nots, and the only way to guarantee a 0:15:46.600 --> 0:15:49.400 stable life was to get yourself as far up that 0:15:49.480 --> 0:15:54.040 ladder as possible by getting the best educational credential that 0:15:54.120 --> 0:16:03.800 you could. That's the road Tabloo's father went down. He 0:16:03.920 --> 0:16:07.720 studied hard, and he got himself into Soul National University, 0:16:08.000 --> 0:16:11.640 the Harvard of Korea. So Tableau gets why his dad 0:16:11.720 --> 0:16:14.280 pushed him and his siblings so hard to do well 0:16:14.320 --> 0:16:18.720 in school. So he probably felt like the only thing 0:16:19.000 --> 0:16:23.120 that can get his kids further away from whatever he 0:16:23.240 --> 0:16:26.400 was coming from where these professions and I and I 0:16:26.480 --> 0:16:34.960 totally understand the thing is I also knew that I 0:16:35.000 --> 0:16:39.560 wasn't born for that, like I I just I just 0:16:39.680 --> 0:16:44.240 knew that I didn't fit into that picture. And uh, 0:16:44.720 --> 0:16:47.280 for you know, most of my life I felt guilty. 0:16:47.520 --> 0:16:52.080 I actually do even now. Really, yeah, I even now. 0:16:52.320 --> 0:16:56.160 Yeah you feel that. Yeah, I actually still feel it 0:16:56.360 --> 0:17:00.640 every once in a while, like maybe you know, maybe 0:17:01.400 --> 0:17:06.040 rebelling against what they wanted caused all of it. Given 0:17:06.080 --> 0:17:09.960 the deeper context of Korean society, where family and business 0:17:10.359 --> 0:17:14.080 and success of the nation have all been intertwined, it's 0:17:14.200 --> 0:17:43.560 no wonder what happened next. That's after the break, I 0:17:43.600 --> 0:17:46.960 had to go to the hospital for like I think 0:17:47.000 --> 0:17:48.720 it's because of my daughter. I don't know if it 0:17:48.760 --> 0:17:50.719 was because of my daughter or me, but it was 0:17:50.960 --> 0:17:55.080 something for something simple like maybe a cold or but 0:17:55.160 --> 0:17:59.160 it required me to get a shot. While I was there, 0:17:59.600 --> 0:18:03.199 the doctor that was there just kept looking at me 0:18:03.280 --> 0:18:07.919 really weird, right, and and you know, like I'm a 0:18:07.920 --> 0:18:13.199 famous persons in the midst of like extreme controversy, so 0:18:13.280 --> 0:18:15.879 of course he's looking at me weird, That's what I thought. 0:18:16.600 --> 0:18:19.600 And then I it's my turn, and he's like okay, 0:18:19.680 --> 0:18:21.880 like like talking to me and like what do you need? 0:18:21.960 --> 0:18:27.200 And then he stops typing, looks at me and says 0:18:27.200 --> 0:18:31.080 something that sounded like you know, I see you're doing 0:18:31.160 --> 0:18:34.160 better than you should be, then you should be That's 0:18:34.200 --> 0:18:39.560 what it was implied to me. M He was like now, 0:18:39.680 --> 0:18:43.760 which means like you're doing well. And the way he 0:18:43.880 --> 0:18:46.479 looked at me, and the way he said it, and 0:18:46.560 --> 0:18:50.679 like just his fingers like on the keyboard and stuff 0:18:51.080 --> 0:18:54.000 convinced me that, like in that moment, that there's a 0:18:54.119 --> 0:18:56.679 high possibility he's one of them. He's one of the 0:18:56.720 --> 0:18:59.240 touch and you remembers, Yeah, and this guy is about 0:18:59.280 --> 0:19:05.080 to m put a needle in my arm right and 0:19:05.160 --> 0:19:11.879 possibly my daughter's like body as well, into her bloodstream. 0:19:12.000 --> 0:19:14.720 So I had to leave the hospital, like, I just 0:19:14.720 --> 0:19:21.320 just had to leave. In the fall, at the height 0:19:21.359 --> 0:19:24.639 of the scandal, people were following Tableau down the street, 0:19:25.000 --> 0:19:27.960 confronting him in public and making threats over the phone. 0:19:28.359 --> 0:19:31.280 It was impossible for Tableau and his family to leave 0:19:31.320 --> 0:19:33.879 the house. He thought if they left the country for 0:19:33.920 --> 0:19:36.800 a while, things would calm down. But when he got 0:19:36.840 --> 0:19:41.440 back that online forum Tajano had only gotten bigger. When 0:19:41.440 --> 0:19:45.680 I got back to Korea, I looked, and I had 0:19:46.160 --> 0:19:48.840 and then I realized that it had now spread to 0:19:49.000 --> 0:19:52.760 my family. I checked the internet and now it had 0:19:52.800 --> 0:19:57.480 become a campaign against my brother, my sister, and my 0:19:57.720 --> 0:20:02.439 mom and dad, and I like, oh my god, and 0:20:02.520 --> 0:20:08.760 not only is persisting, it's gotten like much worse. The 0:20:08.840 --> 0:20:13.000 leader of the Tajano forum, what becomes posted for the 0:20:13.040 --> 0:20:17.399 group to quote make Tableau and his family go crazy. 0:20:17.720 --> 0:20:20.399 He then went on to say, quote, we have to 0:20:20.440 --> 0:20:23.080 beat the ship out of these wild dogs in order 0:20:23.119 --> 0:20:26.479 to taste the truth. This has gone beyond accusations and 0:20:26.520 --> 0:20:31.080 conspiracy theories. They were talking violence. Tableau's mother was getting 0:20:31.080 --> 0:20:34.240 intimidating phone calls at dinner. One night, she got a 0:20:34.280 --> 0:20:36.960 call a man's voice telling her that she was a 0:20:37.000 --> 0:20:41.280 whore and that she and her family should leave Korea. 0:20:41.440 --> 0:20:43.920 And it didn't stop at phone calls. Some of these 0:20:43.960 --> 0:20:46.600 guys dressed up as people working for the government, make 0:20:46.720 --> 0:20:50.119 fake badges and stuff, came to my mom's hair salon 0:20:50.800 --> 0:20:54.760 um trying to investigate her, trying to harass her. Taijano's 0:20:54.880 --> 0:20:59.080 investigation into Tableau has spread to his entire family and 0:20:59.119 --> 0:21:03.240 their credentials. At the time, Tablow's brother was working for 0:21:03.280 --> 0:21:06.280 a large broadcasting channel called e b S, and his 0:21:06.400 --> 0:21:09.879 about profile on the company website incorrectly said that he 0:21:09.920 --> 0:21:14.200 had graduated with his Masters from Columbia University. Tajano looked 0:21:14.200 --> 0:21:17.600 into this and realized that he had only attended the university, 0:21:17.880 --> 0:21:21.160 he never graduated. The thing was this was a mistake 0:21:21.280 --> 0:21:25.959 by EBS, but Tagano latched onto that supposed lie and 0:21:26.080 --> 0:21:29.679 used it as more proof that Tableau's whole family was lying. 0:21:30.640 --> 0:21:36.040 My brother was fired by EBS almost immediately upon uh 0:21:36.080 --> 0:21:41.200 Tajanio claiming that he had also lied about his education. 0:21:41.359 --> 0:21:44.320 It didn't matter that David had never lied, that it 0:21:44.400 --> 0:21:48.760 was a simple company mistake. E b s still fired him. 0:21:48.800 --> 0:21:53.080 The pressure for Tajano was that high. So my wife, 0:21:53.160 --> 0:21:57.160 she was now the wife of a of a fraud 0:21:57.840 --> 0:22:03.040 like immediately upon getting married and having a kid with 0:22:03.400 --> 0:22:07.919 said fraud right, this obviously affects her career as well. 0:22:08.280 --> 0:22:13.119 Tableau's father, Guangbo Lee, also became a target. Tajano was 0:22:13.240 --> 0:22:17.760 sure the Tableous Stanford degree was fake and that suspicion 0:22:17.920 --> 0:22:21.440 had spread to his father. Maybe Tableau's father had helped 0:22:21.480 --> 0:22:24.880 him forge that document. And by the way, his father 0:22:25.000 --> 0:22:28.360 said that he went to Seoul National University, and surely 0:22:28.520 --> 0:22:31.680 the father of a liar must also be a liar himself. 0:22:32.760 --> 0:22:37.320 So they started digging, and they found things things. Tabloo's 0:22:37.359 --> 0:22:41.119 father probably never wanted anyone to see, especially his family. 0:22:42.040 --> 0:22:45.119 He had been hiding something, but it wasn't a credential. 0:22:45.560 --> 0:22:48.280 As a result of what I went through and what 0:22:48.400 --> 0:22:53.240 the internet mob, what they dug up. One of the 0:22:53.320 --> 0:22:58.720 first homes my dad had as an adult was in Korea. 0:22:58.800 --> 0:23:04.080 We call it pun judge. It's literally like these homes 0:23:04.119 --> 0:23:08.520 aren't homes. They have like you know, some people have 0:23:08.560 --> 0:23:13.720 like cardboard. The roof is just something you just place over, 0:23:14.080 --> 0:23:18.480 you know. They have these areas where all the all 0:23:18.520 --> 0:23:22.000 the homes are like that. It's it's really heartbreaking. But 0:23:22.960 --> 0:23:27.560 one of the things they dug up was where my 0:23:27.680 --> 0:23:32.080 dad had lived, and we traced back the address to 0:23:32.200 --> 0:23:36.399 that ear and he was that's where he was living. 0:23:36.560 --> 0:23:40.320 And you found this out because of what happened. Yeah, 0:23:40.520 --> 0:23:44.639 people were going through every whole history everything and uh 0:23:44.880 --> 0:23:47.240 and you didn't know this beforehand. I knew he had 0:23:47.280 --> 0:23:51.240 it tough, but I didn't I realized that I saw, 0:23:51.560 --> 0:23:55.760 like how tough he had it. And for him to 0:23:56.200 --> 0:23:59.360 have gotten to the point where we had an apartment 0:23:59.400 --> 0:24:01.800 by the time I was born, I can only imagine, 0:24:02.320 --> 0:24:07.120 you know, how many sacrifices he probably made right um, like, 0:24:07.960 --> 0:24:11.400 how many of his dreams were if he had any 0:24:11.440 --> 0:24:15.919 at all, like if he even had the time for 0:24:15.920 --> 0:24:21.880 for dreams. But there wasn't really a lot of time 0:24:21.920 --> 0:24:25.640 to talk about that. Years before this, Tablow's father had 0:24:25.680 --> 0:24:29.520 been diagnosed with cancer. It had been treated and everything 0:24:29.560 --> 0:24:32.960 had been fine. But right is all this was happening. 0:24:33.400 --> 0:24:37.359 The cancer came back, and some of Tablo's family blamed 0:24:37.480 --> 0:24:41.840 him when the whole scandal thing happened. Sadly, one of 0:24:41.840 --> 0:24:44.280 the first things they said to me was sort of like, 0:24:44.440 --> 0:24:50.160 and I told you so. Yeah. They they they were 0:24:50.160 --> 0:24:54.840 basically telling me, you know you, your dreams have destroyed 0:24:55.320 --> 0:25:01.600 our family, Your dreams have killed ours. It's weird because 0:25:01.680 --> 0:25:05.560 for Tableau's parents, him going to Stanford was their dream. 0:25:05.880 --> 0:25:09.440 They actually prayed for it, and Tableau fulfilled that dream. 0:25:09.480 --> 0:25:12.040 Tableau never cared about that degree anymore than as a 0:25:12.080 --> 0:25:14.480 tool just to get his parents off his back. The 0:25:14.560 --> 0:25:17.239 degree only really started to have value for him when 0:25:17.280 --> 0:25:19.760 he realized that it could help him toward his dreams 0:25:19.960 --> 0:25:23.399 of becoming a musician. For Tableau, the degree was a 0:25:23.480 --> 0:25:27.399 hurdle and then a tool. For his parents, it was 0:25:27.440 --> 0:25:30.680 a symbol of a better life for their son. But 0:25:30.760 --> 0:25:35.480 ta Jano read that symbol completely differently, because what kind 0:25:35.480 --> 0:25:39.520 of person goes to Stanford, Well, an elite person in 0:25:39.640 --> 0:25:43.439 elites or from rich families, And just like kids from 0:25:43.560 --> 0:25:47.159 rich families suddenly appear on the boards of these big companies. 0:25:47.640 --> 0:25:51.320 It was Tableau prance it around on TV doing something 0:25:51.359 --> 0:25:55.440 that had zero to do with that fancy degree. Tajano 0:25:55.560 --> 0:25:59.119 had a collective mental image of what an elite looked 0:25:59.160 --> 0:26:03.840 like in Tableau fit. The description Hegian Lee from the 0:26:03.920 --> 0:26:07.040 University of Southern California explains this better than I do. 0:26:07.320 --> 0:26:11.440 He claims that he's a Stanford graduate, and Korean's perception 0:26:11.480 --> 0:26:14.560 of a of a person who graduates from Stanford is 0:26:14.560 --> 0:26:19.159 an elite, somebody who should be doing something greater than 0:26:19.200 --> 0:26:22.119 a hip hop artist, somebody who should use their smart 0:26:22.160 --> 0:26:26.720 brains for the betterment of society, Korean society. So his 0:26:26.840 --> 0:26:29.760 career choice was kind of at odds with what people 0:26:29.800 --> 0:26:33.960 expect from an elite. So that's how they defied common sense. 0:26:34.160 --> 0:26:37.679 So he has all these qualities that are considered to 0:26:37.800 --> 0:26:41.920 be a sign a privilege in Korea. Um, and the 0:26:41.920 --> 0:26:45.840 thing is he's using that privilege to evade responsibility as 0:26:45.840 --> 0:26:51.280 a Korean citizen. What I mean the the injustices, the 0:26:52.040 --> 0:26:55.679 systemic just inequality and stuff like this. That you're saying 0:26:55.760 --> 0:26:58.560 that you were sort of resonating with it that the 0:26:58.600 --> 0:27:06.000 TAGO members are rarely against well because they they really are. 0:27:06.160 --> 0:27:10.080 If you take their argument logically and rationally, what they're 0:27:10.119 --> 0:27:13.600 saying is it is not fair that there are elites 0:27:13.720 --> 0:27:18.040 gaming the system. This is Sean Limb Tablo's friend from Stanford, 0:27:18.240 --> 0:27:21.320 and it is not fair that that they're covering for 0:27:21.359 --> 0:27:29.280 each other, lying and allowing people to succeed through cheating 0:27:29.920 --> 0:27:34.960 when we all tried our best to succeed and we failed, 0:27:36.480 --> 0:27:40.440 but we tried our best. Honestly, you can never win 0:27:42.000 --> 0:27:45.679 because they are always being compared to somebody else greater 0:27:45.720 --> 0:27:52.360 than them. That kind of people, you know, used by 0:27:52.520 --> 0:28:00.440 parents like children. What is this? What is this? That's 0:28:00.480 --> 0:28:03.960 our producer Minji Ko. She's trying to explain that there's 0:28:04.000 --> 0:28:06.480 a term for this kind of pressure the Sean is describing. 0:28:06.560 --> 0:28:09.880 So you're referring to I'm China, So that means basically means, 0:28:09.960 --> 0:28:17.240