2024-06-13
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Welcome to the Inquiry with me Tanya Beckett from the BBC World Service.
One question, four expert witnesses and an answer It's a bumpy video lasting over an hour.
What happens in the footage is tricky to decipher, except that it appears to show two people, a man and a woman, meeting and one offering an expensive bagged gift to the other.
On the face of it, there is very little that is remarkable.
And yet this obscure hour long piece of bump secretly filmed video shot in South Korea's capital Seoul, triggered a political storm so large that some say it even affected the outcome of the country's parliamentary elections.
This is because the central character in the video is the wife of the president, a woman who, far from playing the traditional role of living in her husband's shadow, is a fashion conscious 51 year old with her own business interests.
This week on the Inquiry, we're asking what does a designer handbag say about South Korean politics?
Part 1 A handbag In September 2022, a Christian pastor had a meeting with the wife of South Korea's president in her private residence.
Such audiences are not easy to come by, but Cho Jae Yong had already established contact with the first lady sometime.
After all, the pastor not only shared the same hometown as the first lady, he also had the prestige of being a leader in the church.
Rafael Rashid is a freelance journalist based in Seoul, South Korea.
He's a man of religion, and religion goes very far in political circles in South Korea.
Even though South Korea is not necessarily a Christian country, Christian pastors have tended to have very powerful connections in the past and have a lot of political connections.
He was able to become friendly with her through a messaging service, so the Korean equivalent of WhatsApp, and they exchanged messages over several months.
The meeting was not the first time the pastor had met in person with the first lady, and he claims it was concerns over what he heard her say during a prior meeting that had prompted him to seek another audience.
The pastor alleges that during this earlier meeting he had witnessed the first lady discussing the appointment of high ranking public officials.
The first lady campaigns on a number of issues, but has herself no official government role.