0:01

In two thousand eleven, nine Korean

0:04

citizens were prosecuted for defamation

0:06

of Tableau for participating in the online

0:09

campaign against him. For most

0:11

of the public, this put the doubts about Tableau

0:13

to arrest, and the online forum

0:15

Taijanyo went from being perceived

0:18

as of maybe over zealous but overall

0:20

righteous crusade of activists who wanted to

0:22

expose fraud to looking like

0:24

a cult like mob that was uninterested

0:26

in facts. From the outside, it

0:29

looked like Tableau had one. But

0:31

it's not so simple. I mean, can

0:33

you really say you've won if the other side

0:35

is still fighting? Because

0:38

yes, at its peak, Tijanio's

0:40

membership was in the hundreds of thousands,

0:42

and it never reached that again. But Taijanio

0:45

never did go away. There

0:47

are still thirty five thousand members

0:50

on the forum, and people still

0:52

to this day are posting religiously.

0:56

And this is what I wanted to understand

0:58

most. What is it that's kept

1:00

tiging your going for years. We

1:03

can theorize all we want, but it's

1:06

hard to get a clear picture without talking

1:08

to someone who's actually part of that group.

1:11

So our producer Stephanie Karayuki and I

1:13

set out to try to find someone from Tajano to

1:15

tell us once and for all why

1:18

they still believe the Tableau

1:20

was lying. We started by tracking

1:22

down Tijano's most notorious member,

1:25

a man who wasn't just the star of the forum,

1:28

but the person that the police were

1:30

most interested in interrogating. A

1:32

man who goes by the online handle what

1:34

becomes a file?

1:50

What signs my name? I can be, can

1:52

be comfortable, I can writing on

1:55

the worst past them. Yeah,

2:09

blah

2:15

bla from

2:17

Vice and I Heart. I'm Dr

2:20

Thomas and I'm Stephanie Terre. Easy.

2:23

This is authentic episode

2:25

six Tony Justice.

2:43

Steph. You're here because we've been

2:45

working pretty closely together to get a hold

2:47

of someone from Tajano. But it's

2:50

been really hard. Yeah. I

2:52

mean I started the search with

2:54

What Becomes because Officer Sah

2:56

has spent months trying to track him down because

2:59

he was considered the main driver of

3:01

the campaign against Tablow and

3:04

some of the posts he was making were advocating

3:07

physical violence against Tablow and his

3:09

family. Officers saw

3:11

him as the worst guy, and

3:13

then he used the worst guy, so of

3:16

course we are focusing on him, right

3:19

And What Becomes is also a big reason that things

3:21

started getting really serious and the police investigations

3:24

right because the cops figured out

3:26

that he'd signed up for the site using a fake I D,

3:28

which is legal in Korea. And

3:31

when the cops reported that to Neighbor, which

3:33

is the platform the tagno was on, Neighbor

3:35

shut the whole thing down. So for

3:38

a while it looked like the police were

3:40

really on this guy's track and they were maybe about

3:42

to put him away. I found his cell

3:44

phone number after I saw Alan, and

3:47

then I called him from Korea right

3:49

and after Sa, he'd been working

3:51

behind the scenes to track down what becomes

3:53

his real name and address, and

3:55

when he finally got him, so I

3:58

realized what becomes was in the States.

4:01

So he called them, wow,

4:03

and did he pick up? Picked? What

4:05

did he say? So, I asked

4:08

you to Korea for interrogation

4:10

to deny why I'm not the Korean

4:13

citizen anymore. Since after

4:15

SA couldn't get what becomes back

4:17

to Korea, he thought, Okay,

4:20

fine, I can go to him. I was

4:22

quite excited to fright to the USA.

4:27

Korea takes defamation extremely

4:29

seriously, but in the United

4:31

States it's not as serious of a

4:33

crime, So that

4:36

means that there was no way to extradite

4:38

him. Officers even try

4:40

to get interpoll involved, but they

4:43

wouldn't touch it. Yeah, and that

4:45

was pretty much it right, Yeah, which

4:47

is weird to think about because other

4:49

Tashna members had gone to jail

4:52

for posting about Tableau and Korea

4:54

and the things that what Becomes had posted

4:56

were just as egregious.

4:59

But because he stayed in the States,

5:02

he was safe and authorities couldn't

5:04

even question him. If

5:07

we had to him, you might get multi

5:09

tayed. And why he just started

5:11

hepen Yeah, now

5:13

that I think of it, Officers is probably

5:16

one of just a few people outside of TAJNYO

5:18

that's ever been able to talk directly

5:20

to what Becomes exactly. So

5:23

officers couldn't question him. But

5:25

was he able to get anything out of on the phone?

5:28

Well not really, Officer

5:30

said, told me what he knew, and he figured

5:33

out that what becomes his real name is

5:35

Unsucked Kim and that he

5:38

was in Chicago. Huh.

5:40

Yeah, So we know that Kim

5:42

immigrated to the US with his wife

5:44

and two daughters. We also

5:46

know that he ran a small business

5:49

while putting his kids through college.

5:51

Eventually he became a U s

5:53

citizen, and we also know that

5:56

he would stay pretty active on these

5:58

Korean forums, and

6:01

that's how he joined tajan Yo

6:03

as a forum manager almost twenty years

6:05

later, when he was in his fiftiece.

6:09

Yeah, and what's interesting about all this

6:11

info is that half of it Kim

6:13

put out there himself, and

6:16

the rest was released in articles

6:18

soon after investigation. And

6:20

it's not exactly like Kim was

6:23

super private about who he was. Yeah,

6:26

I've read some of his posts from that time,

6:29

and he's talking pretty openly about

6:31

that he has daughters and that he lives in the United

6:33

States. He never hid that exactly.

6:37

All of this stuff you just said, I knew

6:39

from reporting on this series, the

6:42

stuff that you and I haven't talked

6:44

about, And really, this is why I wanted

6:46

to bring you on is because I never

6:48

really got the full story about this.

6:52

You went on this reporting trip

6:54

right by yourself. How

6:57

did that even start? Well, I've

6:59

been reading everything I could about him,

7:02

and I had his Korean name, but

7:04

I also knew that he might be using a

7:06

different name here in the US, So

7:09

really the only thing that I could rely on

7:12

was his last name. So

7:14

I just started looking up phone numbers as

7:16

in You just going through the phone book looking

7:18

for the last name Kim in Chicago.

7:21

That's that's gonna be a lot to go through.

7:24

It was. I mean, I

7:26

was using other stuff too, but

7:28

yeah, I kind of just had to call people,

7:31

and I probably call it at least a dozen

7:33

numbers, and most of them were out

7:35

of service. I think I got maybe one

7:38

person to answer, but she clearly

7:40

had no idea what I was talking about,

7:42

so that was a wrong number. I

7:45

also found some email addresses

7:47

on Google, but most of those bounced

7:49

back, and one of them did go

7:51

through, but no one ever

7:54

replied. I also found

7:56

a couple of addresses, and I was

7:58

thinking maybe I could send a letter.

8:01

You were just really trying everything right.

8:03

I was hoping that I could interview him,

8:05

but at the very least I felt like we should tell

8:08

Mr Kim what we were doing and give him

8:10

the opportunity to make a comment since

8:13

for so long he basically

8:15

was the face of TAJ and Yo. But

8:18

after all the phone calls and emails

8:20

didn't go through, I thought,

8:23

well, if I write a letter, what

8:25

if it gets lost in the mail or he

8:28

just doesn't answer. And

8:30

at the time I was in Ohio, visiting

8:32

family, so I thought, I'm not

8:34

that far from Illinois, so I might

8:37

as well, at the very least go to the address

8:39

that I have just to see if I

8:41

could just talk to him in person. So

8:44

no sending a letter, just pull up

8:47

to his house directly. Yeah, exactly.

8:50

So I got in the car on

8:52

a Sunday morning and I

8:55

drove to Chicago to try to find

8:57

Mr Kim. Hi.

9:00

Okay, so it's me.

9:02

It's Stephanie, and it

9:05

is eighty nine

9:08

am. I am freakishly on

9:10

time. The drive from my parents place

9:12

is like five hours long, so

9:15

I had a bunch of time to think. I

9:17

was thinking about the Tajanio Forum and

9:19

Mr Kim, and I was also

9:22

running through all the questions that I wanted

9:24

to ask him. But as I got

9:26

closer, I started thinking about

9:28

something that had occurred to me but

9:31

that I sort of also avoided thinking

9:33

about too much. When I

9:35

got there, I've hearked and

9:37

I called our supervising producer, Janet.

9:40

One of the things that I've

9:42

been thinking about, how

9:44

can I come off as like super

9:47

comforting and happy

9:49

and also like be wearing my face mask

9:52

and be like a random black person walking

9:54

into this building totally. I

9:57

mean, I felt sort of weird for even saying

9:59

that to her, because I

10:01

was the one who said I wanted to find Mr Kim

10:04

right right, And I was thinking,

10:07

you know what if I ruined our

10:09

chance to talk to him because

10:11

I'm suspicious?

10:15

Yeah, yo,

10:17

okay, So to be real, this is actually part

10:20

of what I want to talk about, because

10:22

when you told me that you've just been

10:25

wandering around looking around in Chicago,

10:28

I thought, man, I

10:30

mean depending on the community. Just

10:32

a solitary black person walking

10:34

in uninvited to a residential

10:37

building that can already make

10:39

people really nervous, let

10:42

alone what it is you want to talk to them about. I

10:44

mean, I've been in the situation

10:46

where you know, you kind of

10:49

have to be overly really

10:51

really friendly because you

10:53

have to anticipate that people may have

10:55

preconceived notions or stereotypes of you, but

10:59

you still have to interact with them exactly

11:02

x exactly. That's exactly how

11:04

it's feeling. And you

11:06

know what happens in these scenarios,

11:09

like you can't think about it too much. And

11:11

I was already there, so I

11:14

kind of had to shove these feelings aside

11:16

and just keep going yeah, I get

11:18

it. Oh, well, so you were there.

11:21

What was it like? So I got out of the car

11:24

and I looked at the building, and up

11:26

close it looked different. Like

11:29

on Google Maps, it looked like

11:31

an apartment complex, but in

11:33

person, it looked more like

11:35

some sort of facility.

11:40

Basically, it's

11:42

so quiet. It seems loud

11:44

because of the wind, but it's actually very quiet.

11:47

There's the wind, the front

11:49

head, sliding doors, and a number that I had

11:51

to call to be buzzed in. Your

11:54

call has been forwarded to an automated voice

11:57

messaging system.

11:59

Joe, Hello,

12:01

it's not available at

12:04

the cell. Please record your message. When

12:06

you finished recording, you may hang up.

12:09

I kept dialing, but nobody at the front

12:11

desk was there, but someone

12:13

came up and let me in. I

12:15

had what I was pretty sure was Mr

12:18

Kim's apartment number, so I

12:20

walked down the hall, found

12:22

it and knocked here

12:26

someone

12:36

no answer. I waited

12:38

a while, but I figured, okay,

12:41

I'm here. I can't just leave,

12:44

so I started asking around. I

12:46

think I probably asked four to five people,

12:49

just hey, do you know Mr Kim?

12:52

Yeah exactly, but

12:54

nobody did. And then I

12:56

walked up to this one person are.

13:02

She didn't know him either, but when

13:04

she found out that I'm a reporter, she

13:07

said that she did have something she wanted

13:09

to tell me. I work for a Vice News.

13:11

Well start taking notes, yes,

13:14

of what you're hearing about a place like this the

13:16

good and this

13:19

neighbor had lived in the building for a couple of years

13:22

and didn't once he use her real name, So

13:25

I'm going to call her Paula. We

13:27

chatted for an hour, So tell me more,

13:29

like, who who comes to

13:31

live here? Sometimes I've

13:33

seen some children bring

13:36

their parents over here. So it turns out

13:38

that this complex is like an affordable

13:41

housing community for lower income

13:43

elderly residents. Paula

13:45

told me that a lot of people who stay

13:47

there get some kind of government assistance,

13:50

and sometimes nurses will come and help

13:52

people bathe or do stuff around the house.

13:55

Okay, so it's a nursing home. Not

13:58

really. Nursing home usually

14:00

have pretty strict rules, but

14:03

at this place, residents can come and go whenever

14:05

they want. But also

14:07

there was something kind of off about it. Paula

14:10

started telling me the story. There's

14:12

this one woman that she was brought in because

14:14

her children encouraged

14:17

her, and boy did she thought

14:19

it. Now she walks around like like a dead

14:21

face, your blank face, and

14:23

I think she just gave up the fight and

14:27

she just she probably

14:29

just waiting until the day comes when she's taken.

14:32

Oh man,

14:34

this place sounds like it was

14:37

just kind of sad. Yeah,

14:41

yeah, I don't really know, and

14:44

I also don't know how much of

14:46

Paula's story is true. But

14:49

this place did have something that felt kind

14:51

of sad about it, and I

14:53

wasn't sure if this is a place

14:55

where someone like Mr Kim,

14:58

likely in the sixties and out goes

15:01

to live a full life. But

15:03

this vibe that I was getting it

15:06

could also be because I was there on a weekend

15:08

and maybe most residents were just gone.

15:11

So Paula was telling me more about

15:14

the apartment when all of a

15:16

sudden, the door zipped open and

15:19

to medical staff rolling a stretcher came

15:21

in. Oh, somebody's being returned.

15:27

It looked like somebody who was at the

15:29

hospital nearby was coming back

15:31

to their apartment. The neighbors

15:33

were crowding around to say hi. It

15:36

felt intimate, like outsiders

15:38

shouldn't be seeing this, so

15:41

I figured I should just go. The

15:49

next day, I went to another address,

15:51

and I was pretty sure that this

15:53

one was a relative of Mr Kim's,

15:56

so I wanted to see if maybe they could

15:58

help me get in touch with him.

16:02

Just ringing the doorbell Hello,

16:08

Someone opened the door, but they

16:10

didn't want to talk, so I stopped

16:12

recording. They did confirm

16:15

that they were related to Mr Kim,

16:17

but they didn't have anything else to say. I

16:20

wasn't surprised, but it did

16:22

help connect some dots. It

16:24

felt like the chances were high that

16:27

Kim did live in those apartments, so

16:30

I went back. I

16:32

figured even if he didn't answer,

16:35

I could at least write a note and put

16:37

it under the door, so

16:41

I knocked on the door. I

16:43

was fully prepared to just write a

16:45

note and try later, but

16:48

then I heard someone moving around

16:50

inside, so I tried

16:52

talking through the door. Hi,

16:55

business Stephanie. Mr

16:58

Kim. Can I ask you a question? Him?

17:01

Oh?

17:05

Mr Kim,

17:08

An I giving my information? He

17:11

said no, he didn't want

17:13

to talk. So I wrote

17:15

down my information and slid it

17:17

under the door and walked

17:19

away. So he obviously

17:22

didn't want to talk about any of this. Yeah,

17:25

I mean, I guess there is an

17:27

outside chance that that wasn't

17:29

him, but the address

17:32

and his family down the road. It

17:34

adds up. We did write

17:37

several letters to him, but he never

17:39

replied, which sucks

17:41

because I had a lot of things that I wanted

17:43

to ask him about. I'm sure you did

17:45

too. Yeah, I mean to

17:48

start off with why

17:50

Tableau? Yeah, and like how

17:53

did he even start down this journey

17:55

with tablow? And what

17:58

if you think about the forum now? Does

18:01

he regret any of it or

18:03

does he wish that he did things differently?

18:06

And I also kind of want to know about

18:09

his life, like what is

18:11

he up to now and

18:13

why does he still not believe

18:15

Tableau? Right?

18:18

Because you found out that he's still posting

18:20

about Tableau yep, our

18:23

producer Minji and I were checking out

18:25

all the comments associated with his user

18:27

name. We found out that

18:30

he made a whole other private

18:32

forum and it's not that

18:34

big, maybe ten thousand members,

18:36

but he is still posting

18:38

on it to this day.

18:41

Yeah. Yeah. The ones that I've seen are

18:43

the ones where he's posting about these different

18:45

education credentials cases that

18:48

are more current. Right. There

18:50

was a big one that happened actually when we were in Korea,

18:53

when the Senior Secretary's daughter, Chill

18:55

Men, was accused of gaming the education

18:58

system also to get into this elite

19:00

school. Yeah, he's

19:02

still really into this stuff. He's

19:04

also done some media, like when Officer

19:07

So was investigating taj. In two thousand

19:09

and ten, Kim did a two day

19:11

in person interview with the June

19:14

On Daily. In that interview,

19:16

he seems to have accepted that Tablo did

19:18

graduate from Stanford, but he

19:21

really wouldn't admit that he was wrong,

19:23

adding that he thinks other people are

19:25

protecting Tablo in a wider conspiracy

19:28

to cover up fake degrees. He

19:31

also asked Tablow to drop the charges

19:33

against him. He mentioned

19:36

that he was getting letters from people threatening

19:38

to come to Chicago and kill his family,

19:41

adding that his family was having a really

19:44

hard time with the situation. I

19:46

think the closest that will ever get

19:49

to understanding why what becomes

19:51

lad this crusade is through this

19:53

sentence that he says in the article quote,

19:57

I did this out of justice.

20:00

Yeah, justice

20:02

this This is tricky, right, because I

20:04

mean what does justice mean

20:07

in this scenario? And

20:09

and that brings me back to the original

20:12

question we had, right which is why

20:15

does he and you know thirty

20:17

five current Taijano members,

20:20

why do they still believe that Tableau

20:22

is lying. And I mean Mr

20:24

Kim did at least partially come around and say

20:26

that, okay, Tableau did graduate from

20:29

Stanford. But what

20:31

is it that taj is trying to prove

20:33

now, right? And this

20:36

is when we loop back to Tajnyo again

20:38

to look at the current online forum to see

20:40

if someone could help. Our

20:43

vice colleagues in South Korea started

20:45

contacting people too. Not

20:47

surprisingly, a lot of people didn't want

20:49

to talk about this. People

20:51

have gone to jail who are a part

20:53

of Tajano, So of course any

20:56

member might be nervous about speaking

20:58

out. But I guess if you put all

21:00

that aside, someone responded,

21:03

yeah, whatever the case might have been, we

21:06

had somebody from Tajano who is willing

21:08

to speak publicly. And

21:15

so we flew to Korea and

21:18

all sat down with the Tajano member.

21:21

Yeah, my conversation with him

21:23

after the break. So

21:47

today we're in a

21:49

taxi and we're headed over to meet

21:51

up with the moderator,

21:54

the leader of the taj forums.

21:56

It took us about twenty minutes to get to Damiel.

21:59

It's arts district of Seoul. It's

22:02

hilly and it has these narrow winding

22:04

roads, these different colored houses, and

22:06

these little boutique shops everywhere. Okay,

22:13

yeah, we

22:15

all met in this coffee shop that the owner let

22:18

us use during some off hours. We

22:20

all sat down, said our hellos and

22:22

agreed to keep our masks on. You're

22:28

doing. Tong Chong

22:31

Jung was wearing a polo shirt and khakis,

22:33

and he seemed like the kind of guy that you smile

22:35

at when you passed him on the street. He smiled

22:38

a lot, actually, you could see it in his eyes

22:40

even over the mask, and he was

22:42

really calm and polite.

22:47

Joan works in e commerce and mostly lives

22:49

in Korea, but he travels abroad

22:51

for work sometimes. It turns out we have

22:53

a few things in common. We're both

22:55

into technology, and he really liked

22:57

studying foreign languages, and so do

22:59

I. And when he heard that I'm a professor,

23:01

he kind of got excited because

23:04

like me, he believes that education is

23:06

really important. Chung joined

23:08

the original tajanio forum about twelve

23:10

years ago around the time when it started.

23:13

He was a really active member, and when

23:15

the original forum was shut down by neighbor,

23:17

he became the manager of Taijano two

23:19

we'll have a voice actor read the translation

23:21

of what he told us. What made you want to actually

23:24

join TAJO instead of just reading

23:26

the post. Ever

23:30

since I was a child, I've been interested

23:33

in history and just his Jong

23:35

is fifty four years old and he grew up in Seoul.

23:38

He's around the same age as what becomes. I

23:40

can't really say how similar the two of them are since

23:43

I've only met Jung, but they did both

23:45

grow up in a really turbulent time in Korea.

23:48

He was the oldest of six kids. Having

23:50

six kids was common in

23:52

Korea at the time. Back

23:54

then, child John had to wear

23:57

black school uniforms and

23:59

have a first cut. Korea

24:01

was developing very fast. Students

24:04

lived in a strict society and

24:07

who had to study really hard. Everyone

24:10

who was focused on Cheung and Yo

24:12

Chung is basically about loyalty.

24:15

In the past, it might have referred to loyalty

24:17

to a king, but nowadays it

24:19

could be interpreted as loyalty to your

24:21

superiors at the company you work for, or

24:23

even your patriotism to your nation. Here

24:26

is deference that a child should show to their

24:28

parents. So both of them are

24:31

essentially about respecting hierarchy

24:33

and when Chung was growing up in the seventies,

24:36

that's just what you were expected to do respect

24:38

the hierarchy. But times

24:40

were changing through the eighties

24:42

and nineties. As Korea went through protests

24:45

and violent military action against its own

24:47

citizens and blatant government

24:49

corruption, a lot of younger

24:51

people, including Chung, were starting

24:54

to question whether some of the people at the hierarchical

24:56

top were really worth that respect

24:59

and to technology was bringing people together

25:02

in ways that let them communicate that frustration.

25:05

At first, junk style technology as a

25:07

career opportunity and a way

25:09

to have fun. In the only nineties,

25:11

when I was in the army, I worked with

25:14

the computers. I

25:16

was also posting a line because around

25:18

the same time that many other

25:20

people were enjoying and lawning about

25:22

the Internet. When Neighbor first introduced

25:25

their online forums, Jung signed

25:27

up immediately. He spent a lot of his time

25:29

on a forum about strategy games and

25:31

sometimes you meet up with the other members to play in

25:33

person. A couple of years later,

25:36

in the two thousands, when Tabo started

25:38

to get famous, Sean noticed

25:40

him. When you first heard about

25:43

Tableau, where were you? I

25:45

thought they were just a very normal

25:48

music act. What what changed

25:50

for you in your opinion about Epicai.

25:52

One of the EPICAI members, Cobbler,

25:55

was on a lot of

25:58

variety shows. I felt it

26:00

was surprising. I went the media

26:02

for Kristian Tabbler and made

26:05

him sounds like a very special

26:07

person. Joan was pretty used to seeing

26:09

Tableau on TV, but

26:11

there's one show he remembers

26:14

that stopped him in his tracks. It

26:16

was two thousand nine. Tableau was on

26:18

this variety show and one of the hosts

26:20

asked him if he was good at school when he was younger.

26:25

Tableau said, no, I was bad in school.

26:31

The host stops him and says,

26:33

how the hell would you get into Stanford. Don't

26:36

make it sound like it's so easy. Tableau

26:39

replies that you just have to do well.

26:41

At the last moment, I

26:50

was very shocked. It was different from

26:52

what I knew as a common sense. How

26:55

could he say you can just study well

26:57

at the end, How could you think like that.

27:00

Chung had worked hard to get

27:02

where it was, and hearing this,

27:05

it just didn't seem right. Jung

27:07

told me that this was a big reason that

27:09

he joined the Tajingo Forum when it first started

27:12

in He also told

27:14

me some of the things that he thinks Tableau is

27:16

still lying about. The list is

27:18

pretty long, but in general they're pretty

27:20

familiar Tajingo talking points. He

27:22

thinks Tableau is faking his language abilities.

27:25

He thinks he staged the graduation photos,

27:28

and he finds Tableau's claim that he finished

27:30

his degree in three and a half years to be

27:32

suspicious. But the police

27:35

cleared Tableau of lying about languages

27:37

and degrees and all that. So

27:39

I asked Jung what he thought about that. He

27:42

said that he doesn't think South Korean police

27:44

actually have the ability to properly

27:46

investigate such a complicated case. I

27:49

still don't think it is Dawn

27:51

correctly sending

27:53

a document to the U S from

27:56

Korea is not an investigation.

27:59

Chung also is that even if police

28:01

do investigate forgeries and they find

28:03

something that they might falsify

28:05

that report if they've been given orders to do

28:07

so by some powerful superior. Talking

28:10

to Chong No, he made it really

28:13

clear that he respects order and

28:15

authority. So if the National

28:17

police and a forensics lab publish

28:20

their findings that Tableau's diploma

28:22

was authentic, why wouldn't

28:24

that be enough for him? Maybe for a

28:26

lot of people listening to this who are not Korean,

28:28

who don't live here, um,

28:31

and who didn't experience firsthand. I didn't

28:33

watch the scandal when

28:35

it happened. This all probably

28:38

sounds like just a misunderstanding and

28:40

just let it go. It sounds like it's much

28:43

more significant for a lot

28:45

of people, especially you can

28:47

can you help me understand that? Hun Uh.

28:56

People think this was a simple

28:58

misunderstanding, but the

29:00

truth is that it has

29:03

a bigger impluence In

29:05

Korea. Um you can get a

29:07

job by forging your academic

29:09

background and using that

29:12

fact background um to get

29:14

a hat in society. It's

29:16

a problem that we need to

29:18

fix. Chung here is talking

29:20

about something that we've kind of been circling

29:22

around for a while now. The thing that really

29:25

drove him to be a leader in the Tajeno Forum

29:28

is bigger than table of the person. It's

29:31

the idea that the rich and powerful

29:34

can skip the line. Well, everyone

29:36

else has to work hard. But to

29:38

him, it's more than just an idea. He'd

29:41

seen the news about Shin jong A, the

29:43

art curator who facured diploma

29:46

and all the others who got caught afterwards,

29:48

and he realized that there could be countless

29:50

people living a good life thanks

29:52

to their fake credentials, while others

29:55

like him have to work hard

29:57

for the same, if not less, John,

30:01

this is not fair, and

30:04

this was a way of doing something about

30:06

it. It's not just a simple

30:09

matter of education. I

30:11

think it's about inequality in

30:13

Korea. And another thing that I want to talk about

30:15

is like the cultural context in which this emerge. This

30:18

is Professor hedging Lee again, who teaches

30:20

communications at the University of Southern California.

30:23

She helped me contextualize and understand

30:25

what jo is getting at here. Back in, one

30:29

of the things where one of the concepts

30:31

that Koreans were really focused

30:33

on was justice. And I think it has

30:36

to do with a lot of people's discontent

30:38

with society because first

30:40

of all, there was a widening gap between

30:42

the halves and the half not so people

30:45

were just not happy with what

30:47

they were seeing and they felt like they

30:49

were living in a society where justice

30:52

wasn't being seen. But if you think about

30:54

it, there a sense of justice was

30:57

at a very personal level. They

30:59

weren't thinking about justice is something that can

31:02

be done through changing the system

31:04

for the collective good. For them,

31:06

justice was at an individual level, meaning

31:09

that, well, here's the system. We know it's broken,

31:12

but look at all these individuals, the bad apples,

31:14

the rotten apples, who are taking advantage of

31:16

it. So they were going after who they

31:18

deemed as the rotten apples instead of

31:20

the system itself. Now he was just

31:22

an easier target for these

31:25

people to seek justice

31:27

rather than the broken system,

31:30

such as education system. Korean

31:32

education system has been broken for so long,

31:34

and this is the case with you know, the United States society

31:36

as well, I think. But there there is a

31:38

tendency to say all these things are broken.

31:41

But here is somebody who is on

31:43

TV. I'm familiar with them.

31:46

They represent something or they seem to represent

31:48

something I don't like. So it sounds like Table

31:51

was almost in the right place at the right time, or

31:53

the wrong place at the wrong time. He

31:56

just caught caught the crossfire exactly.

31:58

So it wasn't really about him. It was just like

32:00

what he symbolized at that moment. In

32:03

the United States, a broken

32:05

public education system can mean a

32:07

lot of things, like how our elementary,

32:10

middle and high schools are essentially racially

32:12

segregated across the country, or

32:14

how universities cost tens of thousands

32:17

of dollars per year to attend, and

32:19

they leave students with a lifetime's worth

32:21

of debt. But in Korea,

32:23

when someone says the education system is

32:25

broken, the nuance is

32:27

a little different. They're more likely

32:29

to be saying that it's unforgiving. If

32:32

you test into a good college, whatever

32:34

job you want to do, whatever your dreams

32:36

are, you know that that diploma

32:39

is going to open those doors for you. But

32:41

if you fail, even once those

32:44

doors start to close, no second

32:46

chances. This is reinforced

32:48

a pretty much all levels of society, even

32:50

the government. On one of the biggest national

32:53

exam days, planes are not allowed

32:55

to fly so that they don't distract the kids.

32:58

If students are running late, then police

33:00

will escort them to the testing center. There's

33:03

no hammering on construction sites and

33:06

absolutely no early stock

33:08

market opening on that day. Even

33:10

regular people do their best to help out by

33:13

not honking their car horns. The upside

33:15

of this is that this focus has given

33:17

South Korea one of the highest

33:19

rates of education in the world, but

33:22

it also puts a lot of pressure on students,

33:25

even young woes. A recent

33:27

survey found that one in three middle

33:29

school students had thought of taking their own

33:31

life. So

33:37

when Chung and Hedge and Lee talk about things

33:39

like the system and inequality,

33:42

this is what they mean. And Tajno,

33:44

in its own way, saw itself as

33:46

trying to dismantle all this. It's

33:49

just that their approach was hyper focused

33:52

on the person that they saw as the symbol

33:54

of everything that was wrong with Korea. We

33:57

just want to pass on just

33:59

society, iety to our children.

34:02

I don't know how long it's going to take,

34:04

but I will not stop. I

34:07

hope we can achieve

34:10

justice. Tableau

34:13

just recently released an album. He's

34:15

got another one coming on the way. He's

34:18

on TV. What

34:20

do you feel when

34:22

you see that? Um, I want Tabler

34:25

to live a normal life. I'm

34:27

totally okay with that. I think Tabler

34:30

could have done wrong

34:32

things when he was young, but

34:35

there's no reason to think that

34:37

he's a bad person. Maybe Tabler

34:40

is a better person than me. I hope he

34:43

continues being a wonderful dad.

34:45

But I also hope that he

34:48

can't clear things up so

34:50

that I can change my mind. If

34:52

he would just be honest, then UM,

34:55

I think we can settle this inevitable

34:57

way. Maybe the strangest

35:00

thing here was that Chung actually seems

35:02

to think that he and Tableau could be on

35:04

the same side, fighting for justice

35:07

to fix the broken system all around them.

35:09

But for that to happen, Chung

35:12

wants more proof. But after

35:14

all these documents more proof,

35:17

will there ever be enough? And for Tajano

35:19

two point oh, the forum that's

35:22

still to this day has over thirty

35:24

five thousand members, what

35:26

is fixing the system? Even? Look like,

35:30

here's somebody who went

35:32

to Stanford, has this amazing

35:35

career, and and it's almost like you're you're

35:39

a stand in for you

35:42

you represent I think, something

35:46

that a lot of people truly

35:48

hate. Has it ever occurred to

35:50

you that this isn't actually about

35:53

you? Most certainly, of

35:56

course it's ironic that

35:59

I was a stand in for, um,

36:04

you know, the social injustices, you

36:06

know, everything wrong about society.

36:09

I think they they saw in

36:12

in me. They wanted me standing

36:14

there so that they

36:16

could have some one to

36:19

throw a punch at. And we

36:21

all were all angry in our own ways. Um,

36:25

but there's no one to really, you

36:28

know, take the punch for it. There's

36:31

no one to uh take the blame for it.

36:33

Really, it's hard to find someone.

36:36

And I think at that moment

36:39

um. I

36:43

was the perfect face for it. Most

36:45

of the kids that are going to be listening to my music and

36:47

that are going to be looking up to me, I

36:50

know they don't want to study like

36:52

I don't like the education system.

36:55

I don't like how I had to live.

36:58

I don't like that I was put through this

37:01

this thing. And I don't want my audience

37:04

looking to me. And you know, having

37:06

their parents say, see, be like

37:09

him, study, go through the factory,

37:11

be a machine, so you achieved

37:13

like him. I want them

37:15

to think that they have an album

37:18

mm hmm. And if

37:20

that's a bad influence, I

37:23

really honestly don't give a ship. Yes,

37:27

it's the truth. Next

37:30

time, Unauthentic, how did you feel

37:33

knowing that there are family

37:35

members who are being implicated in these

37:37

attacks against you? To tell

37:39

you the truth? I wasn't surprised.

37:42

You weren't surprised because you

37:45

know, like I didn't get to choose my relatives, they didn't

37:47

get to choose me. Authentic

37:57

is a production of Vice Audio and

38:00

I Heeart podcast Network, produced and

38:02

reported by Stephanie Karayuki, Minji

38:04

Cool, Kate Osbourne and myself

38:07

with Janet Lee, Stephanie Brown,

38:10

and Sam Egan. Sound design

38:12

and original music composition by Kyle

38:14

Murdoch with additional support from Natasha

38:17

Jacobs. Our supervising producer

38:19

is Janet Lee, editing from Lazy Roberts,

38:22

fact checking by Minji Ku and

38:24

Nikole Pasuka. Our executive producer

38:26

and VP Advice Audio is Kate Osbourne.

38:29

Thanks also to our voice actor Chong Mo

38:31

Young from I Heart Podcast Network.

38:34

Executive producers Nikki e Tor

38:36

and Lindsay Hoffman. I'm Dexter

38:39

Thomas. Make sure to subscribe

38:41

wherever you get your podcast so you don't miss

38:43

an episode, and if you dig it, give

38:45

us a rating and a review,