hankyoreh

By Lee Moon-young, Hankyoreh 21 staff reporter

Recently she has become an icon of “noblesse oblige” as netizens flowered her with compliments.

A survey found her to be the number one CEO people want to resemble and is seen as “worthy of her name”.

It looks like she is on the verge of being crowned the “Korea’s representative CEO”.

Netizens and the media are talking about good deeds on a “different scale”, with the “dignity of a Queen” and looks that are “classy and feminine”. She has “wavy hair” and wears “feminine and luxurious designs that accentuate her sense of color”. Most of all, she “nails the chaebol-family look”.

She also happens to be the main character of a fairytale love story. Around twenty years ago, she met and fell in love with an ‘ordinary’ salaryman while volunteering. Despite the opposition she faced from her parents, they got married and the “male Cinderella” was the talk of the town.

All this information resurfaced within the span of a few days, Ms. Lee became the symbol of generosity in the business world, with media citing her as having “a heart that is as beautiful as her face”.

Between March 19 and 21, some media have produced and propagated this image.

A month before, on February 25, an accident occurred in central Seoul.

A taxi crashed into the revolving doors of the Shilla Hotel. An employee and a customer were injured. The Shilla Hotel is run by Lee Bu-jin (the eldest daughter of Lee Kun-hee the chairman of Samsung Electronics), whose generosity following the accident has made her the icon of noblesse oblige.

The taxi driver, an elderly man in his eighties, insisted that the crash happened because of a Sudden Unintended Acceleration (SUA). However, the police concluded that it was due to the driver’s negligence.

The driver had to pay almost 40 million won (US$38,000) in damages and compensation. At the time, he was living in a one-room flat and caring for his sick wife who had been diagnosed with a cerebral infarction.

President Lee of Shilla Hotel sent a manager to tell the driver that the hotel would not be pressing charges. Touched, the taxi driver said that going to the Shilla to apologize personally would not be enough to show his contrition. He also said that he was very grateful.

About one month later, on March 19, Chosun Ilbo published the first report with an article entitled “Generous Consideration”. After that, broadcast media, newspapers, entertainment and various web portal sites have all been gushing out the same information. (As of March 21 at 6pm, there were a total of 430 articles about this case).

Chosun.com alone has 28 articles on the same topic. The CEO‘s name is Number One in “news abuse” (the phenomenon of creating almost identical articles as clickbait).

The articles go from her love story to her fashion sense, to her hidden generosity, all the way to a her father Lee Kun-Hee’s motto: “Give Generously”.

One local newspaper says “Angel-like good deeds. All chaebol (owners of conglomerates), their children and their children’s children should be like the CEO of Shilla Hotel”.

She does indeed deserved to be recognized for not putting the blame on the taxi driver.

But, to be fair, it is conceivable that her company got even more money in good publicity.

The real problem starts when journalists unnecessarily describe her as “The Beautiful Executive”. This whole saga reveals, once again, the shameful side of media.

Let’s not forget that the “icon of noblesse oblige” and the “little Lee Kun-Hee” is the same person as the President of Management Strategies of Samsung Everland, a company that has been suppressing labor forces. On January 23, the Administrative Court of Seoul ruled that the company was guilty of unfair labor practice for firing the organizers of a trade union.

The woman who sent beef and cake to the old taxi driver is the same woman who is commonly known for “killing local bakeries” by bringing in a luxury franchise “Artisee” onto the market.

The man who taught his daughter to “give generously” is the same man who ignores the suffering of former employees with leukemia.

Two court rulings have recognized the link between the disease and the hazardous working conditions in a former Samsung semiconductor factory.

In the “Republic of Samsung”, mainstream media and web portals are becoming accustomed to the status quo by doing things the easy way.

Media are mass producing information in order to survive.

Too much emphasis goes into what does not need to be said under the pretense that everything that does need to be said, has been said.

More worryingly, between the fine lines of what is acceptable journalism or not, such awkward myths are being mass-produced by the media.

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]