The case of woman involved in Kang Yong-suk scandal coming forward

Famous blogger “Dodomam” involved in an alleged affair scandal with TV personality and lawyer Kang Yong-suk came forward to deny she had an affair. In an interview with a women’s magazine, the woman, named Kim Mi-na, denied she had an affair with him, saying, “(Kang) is not my style.” When a photo was revealed that she took at a hotel swimming pool in Hong Kong, she had denied by saying it was manipulated. Now she said, “I happened to meet Kang in Hong Kong but we were there separately.” It is her appearance that attracted more attention than the affair denial.

She could not have interviewed thinking that people would simply believe her. Kim said, “People think I’m hiding. I wanted to say ‘no’ because people would think that I’m admitting the affair if I hide myself.” The important thing is not her denial and expectation that people will embrace it, but that she is not hiding anymore. She wanted to break people’s perception that the two people had an affair and that the woman is hiding because of it.

Truth is easily regarded as solids but it is more like a liquid. Many truths are just perceptions many people share. If Kim stays silent the scandal hardens into truth. Kim has opted for a strategy to intervene in this solidification process and make into a liquid state. It isn’t important whether people will believe her or not. Rather, she can be successful if she makes things into a fluid situation of “how can you possibly know whether there was an affair if you didn’t see it.”

Adultery is private. Unless it is ruled as crime and the country intervenes to find evidence, it is difficult to confirm things as adultery. With adultery no longer subject to legal punishment in Korea, many affairs can be undeterminable since there is circumstantial evidence but not real evidence. In a divorce suit with her husband, Kim’s coming forward is neither a matter of innocence nor a bald-faced act. Instead, it is based on close calculation of the situations after the abolition of the anti-adultery law.

pisong@donga.com