Kim Jae-ryun is the attorney spokesperson who represents the alleged victim of deceased Mayor Park Won-soon. She has accused the former mayor of indecent assault and sexual harassment against her as yet unnamed client, the mayor's former personal secretary. The client was referred to Kim Jae-ryun, after receiving mental health treatment after her alleged rape. For as yet unexplained reasons the investigation which initially focused upon unknown Mr. A from the mayor's protocol office was then turned to target the mayor.
Attorney Kim has a questionable background as a bona fide representative of women's rights and the "me too" movement in South Korea. As a former public official at the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, Kim Jae-ryun, berated, insulted and threatened a mother whose daughter had been murdered in connection with workplace sexual harrassment. Kim's response suggests she was protecting the employer's interests against those of the wronged surviving mother. There is a witness to the meeting which occured during the prior administration. There is a recording of the conversation of the victim's mother with Kim Jae-ryun in which the latter repeatedly yells rudely, berates the mother, and then threatens her with legal action.
Kim Jae-ryun is a conservative having served as a public employee during the conservative Park Geun-hye administration. She had a role as a director in the Peace and Reconciliation Foundation which was established with funds provided under the agreement between Japan and the Park Geun-hye administration to settle the outstanding claims of the survivors of the wartime sex slaves of the Japanese Imperial Army. Survivors weren't consulted. The claims were allegedly settled for a sum equivalent to about nine million dollars. Kim's husband Ryu Je-woong, in a supervisory role at YTN News, was alleged to have edited reporting about the Park settlement to paint it in the best possible light. Ryu is also alleged to have improperly supressed a news report in 2015 implicating Samsung Chairman Lee Gon-hee in a sex scandal where there was video evidence of him engaging prostitutes. Several months later in 2016, the independent investigative journalism group Newstapa reported the Samsung Chairman's sex scandal. In another instance, Ryu allegedly chose an editorial policy of painting survivors of the victims of the Sewol Ferry Disaster during the Park Administration as gold diggers rather than grieving family members. The workers union at YTN demanded his dismissal.
Something that hasn't been made clear during the Kim Jae-ryun press conferences during the funeral services of Mayor Park, nor in her recent public statement is that the client she represents left the deceased Mayor's office in July 2019. At that time she left a turnover file describing the duties of her office for the benefit of her successor. It is clear from her personally recorded statements in the file, that she held the mayor in the highest esteem, regarded him an honorable man, and as a three term mayor of Seoul, a figure of historic importance. Further she said it was a privilege to serve him as personal secretary, and that the smallest tasks were to be viewed in the role they played supporting the mayor's office. The record of the secretary's own words belie the accusations that "she suffered for four years" because the mayor indecently assaulted her and sexually harassed her.
Beyond this, Attorney Kim's statements initially failed to make it explicitly clear that after she transferred to a different city office, in July 2019, her client accused a different city employee, Mister A, of raping her after an office party April 14, 2020 at which she had became intoxicated. Many viewers of news reports were left with the mistaken impression that the mayor was a rapist. Attorney Kim's client claims, without her consent, she was taken to a hotel room and raped by this employee from the mayor's protocol office. Apparently, after the hotel CCTV video showing their interaction in front of the hotel, authorities concluded that there was a "relationship" between the parties, and that Ms. Kim's client accompanied the alleged rapist to the hotel room willingly. Attorney Kim calls internet presentations of the video "fake news."
It is conceivable that there is a sexist element to the treatment of the April 14 case by the authorities. The CCTV video alone doesn't seem dispositive. It is evident that the female employee felt wronged by an unfair official disposition of the case. As the former secretary of the mayor, she must have felt especially wronged by the handling of the matter. According to Attorney Kim's faulty logic, there is a connection between the April 14th alleged rape incident, and the case against the mayor, because they reveal a common fundamental problem in the treatment of sexual offense matters by the Office of the Mayor. But the investigation was a police matter. Oddly, the putative victim of the mayor's unwanted actions, never timely followed the procedure for filing an official public complaint against the mayor. Legally, the impact of the April 14, 2020, incident on the state of mind of the victim actually undermines the case presented against the deceased mayor, and affords an ulterior motive to bring actions against him, directly and indirectly, in terms of the specific allegation that he had sexually assaulted and harassed her and caused her "suffering for four years."
Initially, there were three separate criminal complaints filed by attorney Kim on behalf of her unnamed client. The first one alleging sexual assault against her client by the Mayor is going nowhere because the accused mayor is dead. The second suit involves so called secondary damage to her client by spreading information against her and subjecting her to threats aimed at inhibiting investigation of the her charges against the mayor. The problems with this second complaint are multiple. It is those close to the complainant who are spreading information about the victim on the internet. It is the attorney for the putative "victim" who is conducting a one sided campaign in the media. The mayor is dead, there is no material connection to the mayor in the so called secondary damages suit. There is a third cause of action against three individuals who are charged with aiding and abetting the mayor's alleged crime of sexual assault. This suit indirectly seeks to obtain compulsory process to unearth the facts related to the underlying allegations agains the mayor by investigation of the mayor's actions over the past four years, which the court has already stated it will not investigate, by alleging a cover up. In proceedings related to the third criminal complaint, a Seoul court decided July 22, that it would not issue a warrant to seize and search the mayor's hand phone because the investigators presented insufficient evidence that the mayor had committed any of the underlying crimes described against the alleged victim.
In her interview today September 14 on KBS 1 Radio, the attorney refers to an April 14th incident complaint, filed September 9th. She alleges the April matter is related to an alleged course of conduct of sexual assualt and sexual harassment by the mayor. She suggests the unfavorable dispositon of the investigation by authorities somehow suggests collusion by the mayor's office. What makes for a good conspiracy theory does not make a viable theory at law. The mayor had nothing to do with this alleged April crime, a rape which was committed by an employee of the mayor's protocol office after an office party, two months after the mayor's last known contact with the putative victim on February 6, 2020.
So it appears that the one sided publicity campaign aimed at libeling the mayor's reputation continues unimpeded in the media by the alleged victim's attorney and right wing allies in the press while the investigation stalls in the courts for lack of evidence. Reporting on the case, investigative critics have noted that Attorney Kim, does not follow the regulations provided in the Seoul City Manual for reporting sex crimes when evaluating measures not timely taken by her client before she was allegedly raped by an office worker in the unrelated April incident. Attorney Kim and her client have disclosed scant evidence of criminal wrongdoing by the deceased mayor. Further the attorney speaks in conclusory terms about accused parties and the complainant, when no judgement has ever been reached at law. In other words, the mayor is referred to as the offender instead of the accused. Likewise, she refers to her client as the injured party rather than complainant. This is not consistent with the professional practice of law in South Korea. All this leads to the conclusion that this whole venture is a political media play, rather than a legitimate search for justice.
Finally, it must be said in light of the complainant's friendly and inappropriate closeness to the Mayor and her evident infatuation with him, that the mayor may have indulged himself with her obvious affection. This is not an appropriate relationship in an office environment nor between a person in authority and a subordinate. According to the reporting cited here, the personnel of the mayor's office received ample instruction on appropriate behavior in the office in this regard. Pretending that one didn't know what was improper or how to report sexual harassment, is not credible. Yet, it appears likely, based upon the known evidence, that anything the mayor may have done with the pututive victim. which is unproven at this point, amounted to no more than unprofessional, inappropriate, or unethical behavior rather than criminal misconduct. The central premise of the complainant, that she experienced four years of suffering because of sexual assaults and sexual harassment by the mayor, based upon what one can see, is thus far, completely unsupported.
Note: the first two graphics originally posted with this story were erroneously attributed and described, so they were removed. (09.15, 1300 local)
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