Speaker 1: Do you remember when you first heard about tableau scandal? Oh? Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: And I was like, whoa, what's happening? What's happening with
Speaker 1: you know, our minds because I didn't give a time
Speaker 1: about where he graduated from. He was just a good guy.
Speaker 1: He was a good rapper, he was a good writer,
Speaker 1: he was a good entertainer. Who cares? Ah where Let's say, like, um,
Speaker 1: do you know where she graduated? You know, nobody cares.
Speaker 1: It's a waste of your precious time. I met j
Speaker 1: Young Park in one of Soul's oldest neighborhoods, Guangamon, on
Speaker 1: this narrow back street that was lying with coffee shops.
Speaker 1: The street itself was pretty noisy, but his friend happens
Speaker 1: to run a yoga studio that wasn't open that day,
Speaker 1: so we went in there to talk. Jean is an
Speaker 1: art curator. He also went to an elite university in Korea,
Speaker 1: so I figured he would be a good person to
Speaker 1: talk to about the obsession with brand names and education.
Speaker 1: But when I asked him about the Tableau scandal, he
Speaker 1: started laughing, which I kind of had to laugh along
Speaker 1: with him because it made me realize again that yeah,
Speaker 1: this is all sort of ridiculous, I mean, being real.
Speaker 1: When I first heard about all this, I kind of thought, wait, what,
Speaker 1: why does anyone care about where a rapper went to college?
Speaker 1: I mean, you're you're you're laughing about this, but and
Speaker 1: I'm we're laughing about this now. But this was completely
Speaker 1: dominating in Korean society. I mean, again, this is hip
Speaker 1: hop we're talking about. Even if you're not a fan
Speaker 1: of the music, you know that in hip hop we
Speaker 1: prized street cred above pretty much everything, and Stanford is
Speaker 1: not where you get street cred. That's not to say
Speaker 1: rappers don't lie. They do, but it's usually in the
Speaker 1: opposite direction, like saying they're from the hood or they're
Speaker 1: in a gang or something like that. But lying about
Speaker 1: being an elite university graduate that just sounds like hustling
Speaker 1: backwards to me. There there were a lot of really
Speaker 1: angry people. People war and are generally very angry, very
Speaker 1: angry about other people. What do you mean if you
Speaker 1: are a Korean citizen, you would totally understand what I
Speaker 1: have just said. But we are very angry at all times.
Speaker 1: We are angry. We are angry at the president. You know,
Speaker 1: we take out the president because we are angry at
Speaker 1: the president. You know, we are very angry at Japan,
Speaker 1: for example, So we always have to win over Japan.
Speaker 1: It's engraved in our way of thinking for the last
Speaker 1: half a century that we have to be really angry
Speaker 1: to achieve because if we remain without anger, our opportunities,
Speaker 1: our resource, maybe our country or freedom are being taken away.
Speaker 1: It's that anger, that emotion, and even the absurdity of
Speaker 1: the situation. With Tableau that may be interested in all this,
Speaker 1: they maybe want to know more what made an entire
Speaker 1: country gets swept up into this frenzy? What drove it
Speaker 1: to the point of criminal charges? With all that smoke?
Speaker 1: Where's the fire and who or what started? But like
Speaker 1: with everything in life, there's a context here, a background history.
Speaker 1: What figs my name? Whatever? I can be drum I
Speaker 1: can I can writing there. My book runs on the
Speaker 1: first past the mark Yeah, a boon box boat from
Speaker 1: Vice and I heart I'm Dexter Thomas. This is authentic
Speaker 1: episode four Hell career. Where was this? I rarely spick
Speaker 1: up rich University. You know I was in because I
Speaker 1: am aware of this issue that when I first sat
Speaker 1: down with j Young, my first thought was and I
Speaker 1: mean this in the most genuine way. I swear this
Speaker 1: dude is just unfairly cool. I mean shoes, his outfit,
Speaker 1: his glasses. He looks like the kind of dude who
Speaker 1: could talk philosophy with you but then also tell you
Speaker 1: a place to get some new kicks. At first, it
Speaker 1: was just small talk. I was asking about himself, and
Speaker 1: everything was fine until I asked him about school. I
Speaker 1: had to actually press him to say where it was
Speaker 1: that he went to college. I mean, I think he
Speaker 1: almost started blushing when I when I say that, you know,
Speaker 1: I graduated from university in Korea, you know, to be specific,
Speaker 1: probably ah, you know, ah, you know, you have a background.
Speaker 1: It's a good school. Kind of yeah, it's a good school.
Speaker 1: But what I don't really want to the fact that
Speaker 1: I graduated from this school with multiple degrees affects people's judgments,
Speaker 1: you know, on me as a person. Interesting. It's very
Speaker 1: ironic because I want to let people know that I
Speaker 1: am really serious into studying and researching different stuff. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, I don't really want to, you know,
Speaker 1: wave the flag that you know I got this thing.
Speaker 1: So it's really twisted desire. The reason I was talking
Speaker 1: to Jayong wasn't really about Tableau specifically. It was because
Speaker 1: of a totally different scandal, something that happened around the
Speaker 1: time Jayong was getting out of school with his own
Speaker 1: multiple degrees and breaking into the art world in two
Speaker 1: thousand seven, which was a couple of years before what
Speaker 1: happened with table If you talk to enough people in
Speaker 1: Korea about Tableau, at some point someone will point out
Speaker 1: that it's kind of like what happened with this really
Speaker 1: prestigious art curator named Shin jong A. And when someone
Speaker 1: explained that to me, things not only started to make
Speaker 1: more sense, but it actually made Tableau story a lot scarier.
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk to an expert, somebody who knew
Speaker 1: Shinjunga's story. But when we were looking for someone to interview,
Speaker 1: someone who was in the art world at that time
Speaker 1: and could really paint the picture of how devastating her
Speaker 1: story was, almost no one wanted to talk, which is
Speaker 1: weird because this was a national case. It was so
Speaker 1: big that people called it shin Gate, as in shinjong
Speaker 1: A and Gate, because Koreans also used gate from Watergate
Speaker 1: like we do for big scandals. But even though this
Speaker 1: was all public knowledge, nobody seemed to want to talk
Speaker 1: about it. I guess the reason why, especially the arts people,
Speaker 1: is that I don't know, maybe people there's a general
Speaker 1: maybe consensus that we don't talk that ship about ourselves.
Speaker 1: But j Young is kind of a rebel, so he
Speaker 1: was down to give us the context. I think in
Speaker 1: the art board people or generally remained silent about it
Speaker 1: because she was a curator at all a prestigious, you know,
Speaker 1: private museum, and she was about to curate a section
Speaker 1: of the Contrivinale, which is like a really really important,
Speaker 1: you know position, or anyone. In the early two thousand's,
Speaker 1: Shinjanga was a rising star in the Korean art world.
Speaker 1: She had become the lead curator of an art museum
Speaker 1: and soul she was a professor at a local university,
Speaker 1: and she had ties to the office of the then
Speaker 1: Korean president, and only thirty five years old, she had
Speaker 1: been appointed as director of the Kuangju Bien l which
Speaker 1: is one of the most acclaimed art events in Asia.
Speaker 1: Shinjunga wasn't just a success story. She was a role model.
Speaker 1: But then in the summer of two thousand seven, members
Speaker 1: of the board of Reuniversity started questioning her academic record.
Speaker 1: An entire television program was done to investigate her, and
Speaker 1: even though she insisted that her records were true, it
Speaker 1: was revealed that she had fabricated her resume. She had
Speaker 1: been lying about receiving a bachelor's from the University of
Speaker 1: Kansas and a pH d from Yale University. Shinjunga was
Speaker 1: fired from all of her positions, and then she was
Speaker 1: convicted of falsifying records and she ended up serving time
Speaker 1: in prison for that. I asked j Young what he
Speaker 1: thought of that punishment. Ah, that's a complicated issue like
Speaker 1: all the other issues in the Korean society that I
Speaker 1: think was like, um, like a showcase example of you know,
Speaker 1: if you funk with the system, we're gonna punish you.
Speaker 1: Her scandal set off a nationwide wave of allegations, investigations,
Speaker 1: and confessions of diploma fraud, and then a massive crackdown
Speaker 1: on credential forgery. For a while, it seemed like everyone
Speaker 1: was accusing everyone of credential forgery, which seems ridiculous except
Speaker 1: that a bunch of those cases ended up being true.
Speaker 1: Hundreds of people were investigated, celebrities, soldiers, government officials, ended
Speaker 1: up confessing to forging their credentials. Even a prominent Buddhist
Speaker 1: monk was exposed for having lied about where he went
Speaker 1: to school. I think that case just fully satisfied people's
Speaker 1: fantasy that people in the art word are like that
Speaker 1: they are either highly educated or trying to post themselves
Speaker 1: as highly educated. I think it happens at not only
Speaker 1: in Korea, but in Korea, maybe the intensity is much
Speaker 1: much higher than you might expect. Shin Junga became a symbol.
Speaker 1: She was guilty of lying and was now the poster
Speaker 1: child for fraud. But she also confirms something something that
Speaker 1: people already thought, that the elites are getting over on
Speaker 1: the rest of us, that everything, the entire society, it's
Speaker 1: all rigged, and then all of us we have to work.
Speaker 1: But them, the people with connections, they can do whatever
Speaker 1: they want. They don't even have to earn their degrees.
Speaker 1: This isn't a new idea, and it's not even particularly Korean,
Speaker 1: but there is a particular interpretation of this that's a
Speaker 1: little more prominent in Korean culture, especially recently over the
Speaker 1: past few years. It's almost kind of a meme that's
Speaker 1: caught on among younger people. Hell Korea or hand Korea
Speaker 1: or like people jokingly it's aself, that depreciating term to
Speaker 1: describe one's home country, which is Korea as hell, like
Speaker 1: living in Korea is like living in a hell. I
Speaker 1: agree that Korea is a hellish place to live. To
Speaker 1: be honest, it's a highly competitive and there's a lot
Speaker 1: of social pressure, economic pressure, and so many um brutal
Speaker 1: things happening. It's very misogynistic, I must say, it's not inclusive.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I imagine myself as a being a foreigner in
Speaker 1: this country, and then everything looks so interesting, like so
Speaker 1: funny if I if I was a foreigner, the only
Speaker 1: bad thing is that I'm actually a Korean citizen who's
Speaker 1: living in this is actually I think that's what makes
Speaker 1: Korean very interesting, dynamic place. People say like her duos
Speaker 1: on mhm, which is like hell Korea. I've never liked
Speaker 1: that phrase, um because you know, it singles out Korea
Speaker 1: as a possible hell. You know, it puts it puts
Speaker 1: that word on a on this whole country, which which
Speaker 1: I really detest um because it's not it's not a
Speaker 1: Korean problem. Is it's not a Korea problem. It's a
Speaker 1: it's a modern problem. It's hellish everywhere, right to different
Speaker 1: degrees in different um, you know, but it's hell pretty
Speaker 1: much everywhere. It's there's it's not easy anywhere. But I'm
Speaker 1: just worry of any umbrella terms, especially ones that are
Speaker 1: so damaging to our identities as Korean. On paper, South
Speaker 1: Korea looks like an incredible economic success story, and it is.
Speaker 1: It went from a war torn, impoverished country into a
Speaker 1: global powerhouse in the top ten largest economies in the
Speaker 1: world over the space of a few decades. It was
Speaker 1: only about seven years ago that the Korean War divided
Speaker 1: the country into two halves. That might sound like a
Speaker 1: long time ago from the outside, but in Korea that
Speaker 1: memory is pretty fresh. The war was devastating. Um it's
Speaker 1: an understatement, you know. It tore our country apart. My dad, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, he grew well, he was an orphan, so
Speaker 1: he had a really tough his whole life. Tableau doesn't
Speaker 1: know what happened to his grandparents, His family doesn't talk
Speaker 1: about it. But for him to have gotten to the
Speaker 1: point where we were living in a fairly you know,
Speaker 1: fairly middle class apartment by the time my brother was born,
Speaker 1: and then a little bigger every time until I was born.
Speaker 1: I can only imagine how how hard he hustled and
Speaker 1: how how much he struggled. He had to like take
Speaker 1: leaps to get a couple of steps up. Tablow's father
Speaker 1: is like a lot of immigrant parents just looking for
Speaker 1: something better for their child. That parents definition of better
Speaker 1: is based on their past history, and Tablew's father's history
Speaker 1: is intertwined with the way Korea came to be as
Speaker 1: we know it today. There's no way that I could
Speaker 1: explain the entirety of modern Korean history here, but the
Speaker 1: short version is that there's a lot of things in
Speaker 1: the background. One of those things is how South Korea
Speaker 1: went from a poor, war torn country in the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties to an economic powerhouse all in the space of
Speaker 1: a few decades. After the war, the Korean government invested
Speaker 1: heavily into educational infrastructure. At the same time, they were
Speaker 1: pumping relief funds and extremely favorable loans into certain businesses
Speaker 1: that would commit to rebuilding the country. The plan worked
Speaker 1: and the economy soared, but Korea also ended up with
Speaker 1: powerful conglomerates run by incredibly rich families. You've definitely heard
Speaker 1: of them, Samsung, Hyundai, l g those sorts. In Korea,
Speaker 1: they call these powerful dynasties chibbles, which basically just translates
Speaker 1: out to the phrase rich families. So when a massive
Speaker 1: financial crisis hit Korea hard in the nineties and jobs
Speaker 1: became scarce, but those rich families seem to be doing
Speaker 1: just fine, it exposed something that people already knew that
Speaker 1: there was an increasingly unfair hierarchy between the halves and
Speaker 1: the have nots, and the only way to guarantee a
Speaker 1: stable life was to get yourself as far up that
Speaker 1: ladder as possible by getting the best educational credential that
Speaker 1: you could. That's the road Tabloo's father went down. He
Speaker 1: studied hard, and he got himself into Soul National University,
Speaker 1: the Harvard of Korea. So Tableau gets why his dad
Speaker 1: pushed him and his siblings so hard to do well
Speaker 1: in school. So he probably felt like the only thing
Speaker 1: that can get his kids further away from whatever he
Speaker 1: was coming from where these professions and I and I
Speaker 1: totally understand the thing is I also knew that I
Speaker 1: wasn't born for that, like I I just I just
Speaker 1: knew that I didn't fit into that picture. And uh,
Speaker 1: for you know, most of my life I felt guilty.
Speaker 1: I actually do even now. Really, yeah, I even now.
Speaker 1: Yeah you feel that. Yeah, I actually still feel it
Speaker 1: every once in a while, like maybe you know, maybe
Speaker 1: rebelling against what they wanted caused all of it. Given
Speaker 1: the deeper context of Korean society, where family and business
Speaker 1: and success of the nation have all been intertwined, it's
Speaker 1: no wonder what happened next. That's after the break, I
Speaker 1: had to go to the hospital for like I think
Speaker 1: it's because of my daughter. I don't know if it
Speaker 1: was because of my daughter or me, but it was
Speaker 1: something for something simple like maybe a cold or but
Speaker 1: it required me to get a shot. While I was there,
Speaker 1: the doctor that was there just kept looking at me
Speaker 1: really weird, right, and and you know, like I'm a
Speaker 1: famous persons in the midst of like extreme controversy, so
Speaker 1: of course he's looking at me weird, That's what I thought.
Speaker 1: And then I it's my turn, and he's like okay,
Speaker 1: like like talking to me and like what do you need?
Speaker 1: And then he stops typing, looks at me and says
Speaker 1: something that sounded like you know, I see you're doing
Speaker 1: better than you should be, then you should be That's
Speaker 1: what it was implied to me. M He was like now,
Speaker 1: which means like you're doing well. And the way he
Speaker 1: looked at me, and the way he said it, and
Speaker 1: like just his fingers like on the keyboard and stuff
Speaker 1: convinced me that, like in that moment, that there's a
Speaker 1: high possibility he's one of them. He's one of the
Speaker 1: touch and you remembers, Yeah, and this guy is about
Speaker 1: to m put a needle in my arm right and
Speaker 1: possibly my daughter's like body as well, into her bloodstream.
Speaker 1: So I had to leave the hospital, like, I just
Speaker 1: just had to leave. In the fall, at the height
Speaker 1: of the scandal, people were following Tableau down the street,
Speaker 1: confronting him in public and making threats over the phone.
Speaker 1: It was impossible for Tableau and his family to leave
Speaker 1: the house. He thought if they left the country for
Speaker 1: a while, things would calm down. But when he got
Speaker 1: back that online forum Tajano had only gotten bigger. When
Speaker 1: I got back to Korea, I looked, and I had
Speaker 1: and then I realized that it had now spread to
Speaker 1: my family. I checked the internet and now it had
Speaker 1: become a campaign against my brother, my sister, and my
Speaker 1: mom and dad, and I like, oh my god, and
Speaker 1: not only is persisting, it's gotten like much worse. The
Speaker 1: leader of the Tajano forum, what becomes posted for the
Speaker 1: group to quote make Tableau and his family go crazy.
Speaker 1: He then went on to say, quote, we have to
Speaker 1: beat the ship out of these wild dogs in order
Speaker 1: to taste the truth. This has gone beyond accusations and
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories. They were talking violence. Tableau's mother was getting
Speaker 1: intimidating phone calls at dinner. One night, she got a
Speaker 1: call a man's voice telling her that she was a
Speaker 1: whore and that she and her family should leave Korea.
Speaker 1: And it didn't stop at phone calls. Some of these
Speaker 1: guys dressed up as people working for the government, make
Speaker 1: fake badges and stuff, came to my mom's hair salon
Speaker 1: um trying to investigate her, trying to harass her. Taijano's
Speaker 1: investigation into Tableau has spread to his entire family and
Speaker 1: their credentials. At the time, Tablow's brother was working for
Speaker 1: a large broadcasting channel called e b S, and his
Speaker 1: about profile on the company website incorrectly said that he
Speaker 1: had graduated with his Masters from Columbia University. Tajano looked
Speaker 1: into this and realized that he had only attended the university,
Speaker 1: he never graduated. The thing was this was a mistake
Speaker 1: by EBS, but Tagano latched onto that supposed lie and
Speaker 1: used it as more proof that Tableau's whole family was lying.
Speaker 1: My brother was fired by EBS almost immediately upon uh
Speaker 1: Tajanio claiming that he had also lied about his education.
Speaker 1: It didn't matter that David had never lied, that it
Speaker 1: was a simple company mistake. E b s still fired him.
Speaker 1: The pressure for Tajano was that high. So my wife,
Speaker 1: she was now the wife of a of a fraud
Speaker 1: like immediately upon getting married and having a kid with
Speaker 1: said fraud right, this obviously affects her career as well.
Speaker 1: Tableau's father, Guangbo Lee, also became a target. Tajano was
Speaker 1: sure the Tableous Stanford degree was fake and that suspicion
Speaker 1: had spread to his father. Maybe Tableau's father had helped
Speaker 1: him forge that document. And by the way, his father
Speaker 1: said that he went to Seoul National University, and surely
Speaker 1: the father of a liar must also be a liar himself.
Speaker 1: So they started digging, and they found things things. Tabloo's
Speaker 1: father probably never wanted anyone to see, especially his family.
Speaker 1: He had been hiding something, but it wasn't a credential.
Speaker 1: As a result of what I went through and what
Speaker 1: the internet mob, what they dug up. One of the
Speaker 1: first homes my dad had as an adult was in Korea.
Speaker 1: We call it pun judge. It's literally like these homes
Speaker 1: aren't homes. They have like you know, some people have
Speaker 1: like cardboard. The roof is just something you just place over,
Speaker 1: you know. They have these areas where all the all
Speaker 1: the homes are like that. It's it's really heartbreaking. But
Speaker 1: one of the things they dug up was where my
Speaker 1: dad had lived, and we traced back the address to
Speaker 1: that ear and he was that's where he was living.
Speaker 1: And you found this out because of what happened. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people were going through every whole history everything and uh
Speaker 1: and you didn't know this beforehand. I knew he had
Speaker 1: it tough, but I didn't I realized that I saw,
Speaker 1: like how tough he had it. And for him to
Speaker 1: have gotten to the point where we had an apartment
Speaker 1: by the time I was born, I can only imagine,
Speaker 1: you know, how many sacrifices he probably made right um, like,
Speaker 1: how many of his dreams were if he had any
Speaker 1: at all, like if he even had the time for
Speaker 1: for dreams. But there wasn't really a lot of time
Speaker 1: to talk about that. Years before this, Tablow's father had
Speaker 1: been diagnosed with cancer. It had been treated and everything
Speaker 1: had been fine. But right is all this was happening.
Speaker 1: The cancer came back, and some of Tablo's family blamed
Speaker 1: him when the whole scandal thing happened. Sadly, one of
Speaker 1: the first things they said to me was sort of like,
Speaker 1: and I told you so. Yeah. They they they were
Speaker 1: basically telling me, you know you, your dreams have destroyed
Speaker 1: our family, Your dreams have killed ours. It's weird because
Speaker 1: for Tableau's parents, him going to Stanford was their dream.
Speaker 1: They actually prayed for it, and Tableau fulfilled that dream.
Speaker 1: Tableau never cared about that degree anymore than as a
Speaker 1: tool just to get his parents off his back. The
Speaker 1: degree only really started to have value for him when
Speaker 1: he realized that it could help him toward his dreams
Speaker 1: of becoming a musician. For Tableau, the degree was a
Speaker 1: hurdle and then a tool. For his parents, it was
Speaker 1: a symbol of a better life for their son. But
Speaker 1: ta Jano read that symbol completely differently, because what kind
Speaker 1: of person goes to Stanford, Well, an elite person in
Speaker 1: elites or from rich families, And just like kids from
Speaker 1: rich families suddenly appear on the boards of these big companies.
Speaker 1: It was Tableau prance it around on TV doing something
Speaker 1: that had zero to do with that fancy degree. Tajano
Speaker 1: had a collective mental image of what an elite looked
Speaker 1: like in Tableau fit. The description Hegian Lee from the
Speaker 1: University of Southern California explains this better than I do.
Speaker 1: He claims that he's a Stanford graduate, and Korean's perception
Speaker 1: of a of a person who graduates from Stanford is
Speaker 1: an elite, somebody who should be doing something greater than
Speaker 1: a hip hop artist, somebody who should use their smart
Speaker 1: brains for the betterment of society, Korean society. So his
Speaker 1: career choice was kind of at odds with what people
Speaker 1: expect from an elite. So that's how they defied common sense.
Speaker 1: So he has all these qualities that are considered to
Speaker 1: be a sign a privilege in Korea. Um, and the
Speaker 1: thing is he's using that privilege to evade responsibility as
Speaker 1: a Korean citizen. What I mean the the injustices, the
Speaker 1: systemic just inequality and stuff like this. That you're saying
Speaker 1: that you were sort of resonating with it that the
Speaker 1: TAGO members are rarely against well because they they really are.
Speaker 1: If you take their argument logically and rationally, what they're
Speaker 1: saying is it is not fair that there are elites
Speaker 1: gaming the system. This is Sean Limb Tablo's friend from Stanford,
Speaker 1: and it is not fair that that they're covering for
Speaker 1: each other, lying and allowing people to succeed through cheating
Speaker 1: when we all tried our best to succeed and we failed,
Speaker 1: but we tried our best. Honestly, you can never win
Speaker 1: because they are always being compared to somebody else greater
Speaker 1: than them. That kind of people, you know, used by
Speaker 1: parents like children. What is this? What is this? That's
Speaker 1: our producer Minji Ko. She's trying to explain that there's
Speaker 1: a term for this kind of pressure the Sean is describing.
Speaker 1: So you're referring to I'm China, So that means basically means,
Speaker 1: my oh, my friend's son did this. My friend's daughter
Speaker 1: was able to get an A plus, how come you
Speaker 1: didn't get one? So it sounds so innocent. Actually that
Speaker 1: omtin even in Korean that sounds like cute, but really
Speaker 1: that though those are fighting words. Those are like, you know,
Speaker 1: piercing words. You don't want to hear that. It's like
Speaker 1: keeping up with the Jones is well, yeah, your kids
Speaker 1: junior version or kitty version or how we want to
Speaker 1: say it. Yeah, man, because in Korea, the way that
Speaker 1: it's been set up is that there's only one route
Speaker 1: to success. So even starting with the way that like
Speaker 1: your tests are graded. After every test, I believe they
Speaker 1: post the grades on the wall, right and just at school, Yeah,
Speaker 1: one to the bottom. There's always only number one, number one,
Speaker 1: and there's only one way to get to that number one.
Speaker 1: So from an early age, everyone is just kind of
Speaker 1: indoctrinated into just only one root of success. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's that whole crabs in a bucket mentality very strong here. Now,
Speaker 1: if you've seen Parasite or Squid Games or any of
Speaker 1: those dystopian films that have caught on in America, you
Speaker 1: might be attempted to think that, man, Korean society is
Speaker 1: so cut throat and dark and sort of but I
Speaker 1: think it's a little more accurate to say that those
Speaker 1: things have caught on in America precisely, because when we
Speaker 1: see the despair and parasite, or the hopelessness and squid game,
Speaker 1: we're seeing a reflection of ourselves and our own s
Speaker 1: id I mean, the mega corporations, the shady government ties.
Speaker 1: We got that here in America, the dark history that
Speaker 1: isn't all that long ago, that still haunts our national conscience.
Speaker 1: Think back to the protests a couple of summers ago.
Speaker 1: We definitely got that. The idea that education is the
Speaker 1: only way to get ahead, yep, and we've got the
Speaker 1: student loans to prove it. There's been some unique factors
Speaker 1: in both countries that have led to both places being
Speaker 1: pretty grim and yet holding out a glimmer of hope
Speaker 1: that feels fair, And just like in America, some Koreans
Speaker 1: have just sort of accepted that as the way things are.
Speaker 1: But some people are really really piste off. And when
Speaker 1: people are piste off, they start looking for answers. So
Speaker 1: when you lay it all out, maybe it goes something
Speaker 1: like this. The Shinjunga scandal had proven what everyone suspected
Speaker 1: all along, the society was unfair and that some people
Speaker 1: were willing to lie their way to the top. But
Speaker 1: now that they knew that what had changed, well nothing.
Speaker 1: One person did go to jail, but society fundamentally hadn't changed.
Speaker 1: Things were still unfair. There was still an elite them
Speaker 1: and a downtrodden us. And the Tajo Tablow definitely didn't
Speaker 1: look like any of us. It looked like another one
Speaker 1: of them. And then when you have like these things
Speaker 1: that lets them release their frustration, you're releasing it at
Speaker 1: the wrong guy. But it didn't matter. The target might
Speaker 1: have been wrong, but the campaign felt right. It felt good.
Speaker 1: Maybe this time, if they could catch Tableau, Korea could
Speaker 1: finish what they'd started with Shin jong A. Soon Korean
Speaker 1: authorities were flooded with calls for justice. People were demanding
Speaker 1: accountability and truth from Blow and it worked. Soon Tableau
Speaker 1: was under investigation by the Korean police. That's next time
Speaker 1: on Authentic. Authentic is a production of Vice Audio and
Speaker 1: I Heeart podcast Network, produced and reported by Stephanie Kayuki,
Speaker 1: Minji Coo, Kate Osborne and myself with Janet Lee, Stephanie Brown,
Speaker 1: and Sam Egan. Sound design and original music composition by
Speaker 1: Kyle Murdock, with additional support from Natasha Jacobs. Our supervising
Speaker 1: producer is Janet Lee, editing from Lacy Roberts, fact checking
Speaker 1: by Minji Ko and Nicole Pasuka. Our executive producer and
Speaker 1: VP Advice Audio is Kate Osbourne from I Heeart Podcast Network.
Speaker 1: Executive producers Nikki E. Tor and Lindsay Hoffman. I'm Dexter Thomas.
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