Prosecutors said they did not have enough evidence to prove that these companies hired Kim Keon-hee’s company to organize these art exhibitions because her husband was heading the Seoul District Prosecutors Office at the time:
Prosecutors have cleared first lady Kim Keon Hee of graft suspicions involving three art exhibitions hosted by her former cultural content company, officials said Thursday.
Kim had been under graft suspicions that about a dozen conglomerates sponsored three art exhibitions organized by her former company, Covana Contents, allegedly because President Yoon Suk Yeol was serving in a high-level prosecution position at that time.
Yoon was heading the Seoul Central District Prosecutors Office while one of the art exhibitions on Swiss sculpture Alberto Giacometti was held in 2018.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
The Korean left are continuing their attacks on the first lady:
The office of President Yoon Suk Yeol again rejected stock manipulation allegations involving first lady Kim Keon Hee on Tuesday as the main opposition party stepped up its calls for a special prosecutor investigation.
The main opposition Democratic Party (DP) has vowed to push for a special probe into the first lady after a court last week acquitted financiers in the stock manipulation scheme involving Deutsch Motors Inc., a BMW car dealer in South Korea, citing the expiration of the statute of limitations.
The DP has long accused Kim of playing the role of a financier and having her stock account managed and used in the manipulation.
But the court’s acquittal of the financiers makes it unnecessary to look into related suspicions related to the first lady for dealings covered between December 2009 and September 2010, a period where the statute of the limitations has expired.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link, but according to the Presidential office the lead investor who made 455 stock trades during this timeframe was found innocent by the court while Kim Keon-hee made only 3 trades. So the logic is how can 3 trades be considered stock manipulation when 455 trades is not?
To me this all seems like payback for the prosecutors continuing their investigation into the opposition leader Lee Jae-myung for his alleged corrupt dealings as the Gyeongi province governor.
The attacks against the Korean First Lady continue. She was cleared of plagiarizing her Phd dissertation. Now her Master’s thesis is being investigated for plagiarism:
Sookmyung Women’s University launched an inquiry last month into plagiarism allegations involving first lady Kim Keon Hee’s master’s degree thesis on art education, sources said Tuesday.
Kim has been under allegations that she plagiarized the dissertation, which she submitted in 1999 to the university’s graduate school of education for her master’s degree.
Sookmyung began a probe into Kim’s case in mid-December, an alumni association of the university said, citing a letter sent from the school. The final result is expected to be out by around mid-March if relevant regulations requiring an outcome within 90 days upon such a probe’s launch are observed.
Yonhap
Kim has already been mocked & shamed publicly and she apologized for her prior resume padding actions. What is going on here is that this is likely retaliation for the investigations into Lee Jae-myung’s wife for when her husband was governor of Gyeongi province. What I would like to see is an investigation into the thesis and dissertations of all major political figures in Korea. How widespread is this problem?
First Lady Kim Keon-hee cannot do anything without getting ripped by her critics. Has there ever been a first lady this demonized?:
First lady Kim Keon-hee is back under the microscope on Monday, this time for her charity work during President Yoon Suk-yeol’s visit to Cambodia for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit. She was photographed holding a boy suffering from a congenital heart disease, and some opposition politicians are claiming that she tried to imitate an image of “Roman Holiday” star Audrey Hepburn in war-torn Somalia back in 1992.
Korea Times
According to the presidential office, Kim, who is accompanying President Yoon Suk-yeol on his trip to Cambodia and Indonesia, visited the child’s home on Saturday.
Kim was supposed to meet the boy a day earlier when she visited Hebron Medical Center in Phnom Penh, a facility established in 2007 by a South Korean pediatrician, but the boy did not show up to the event due to his condition.
Kim decided to meet the boy instead of visiting Angkor Wat as part of an official program for first spouses that the Cambodian government had set up, the presidential office said.
“You can beat it, right? Get well and let’s meet in South Korea,” Kim was quoted by deputy presidential spokesperson Lee Jae-myoung as saying to the boy.
The photos of Kim holding the boy grabbed the attention of the Korean public.
Wearing a black short-sleeved polo-style shirt and white pants, Kim was holding the boy in her arms while staring into the distance. People online soon compared this photo with Hepburn’s photo taken during her visit to a UNICEF-assisted feeding center in Baidoa, Somalia, in 1992.
In the 1992 photo, Hepburn was wearing a dark polo-style shirt and light-colored chino pants, staring into the distance while holding a child in her arms. Online users and main opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) Rep. Kim Yong-min accused the Korean first lady of mimicking the British actress.
“If you want to emulate someone, try to emulate their spirit and sacrifices, not their pose or attire,” Kim wrote on Facebook. “Also, please start by abandoning the evil of using those who are suffering as ornaments.”
During a party meeting on Monday, DPK Rep. Jang Kyung-tae accused the presidential office of resorting to “poverty porn” and chided the first lady for committing a “diplomatic discourtesy” for ducking out of the official program for first spouses.
You can read more at the link.
