From the first days of her husband’s presidency, Kim Keon Hee was unlike other South Korean first ladies, who stayed in their husbands’ shadows.
Her high profile — and her comments like she was “the man” of her household — rattled the country’s patriarchal society. A prominent dog lover, she accomplished what animal rights groups had tried but could not for decades: make South Korea ban dog meat for food. At the same time, she was prone to scandals and was accused of overstepping her role, leading to many misogynistic attacks against her.
Now, Ms. Kim, 53, who tried to style herself after Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, is the country’s first former first lady to be imprisoned. On Wednesday, a court in Seoul is expected to rule on corruption charges against her.
Her downfall came alongside that of her husband, former President Yoon Suk Yeol, after he attempted to declare martial law in late 2024. He was driven, special prosecutors have said, in part by his desperate attempt to shield her, as well as himself, from criminal investigations.
“She played a leading role from the moment Yoon Suk Yeol entered politics and went on to form a ‘political partnership’ with him,” said Oh Jeong-hee, a special prosecutor. “She held no official position, but enjoyed a status rivaling the president’s.”
After his martial law collapsed, Mr. Yoon was expelled from office and arrested on insurrection charges. Ms. Kim is not accused of being involved in Mr. Yoon’s decree. But she was arrested last August and has been indicted on criminal charges, including accepting expensive gifts — such as luxury handbags or diamond necklaces — from people who special prosecutors said secured government jobs and other favors with her help.
Political Partnership
Mr. Yoon called his marriage to Ms. Kim in 2012 his “happiest memory.” He was a prosecutor at the time and Ms. Kim, his junior by 12 years, was an art exhibition organizer.
He acknowledged her role in shaping his political career. During his presidential campaign, Mr. Yoon said he woke up at five or six one morning to find her lying on the bed and answering text messages on Mr. Yoon’s smartphone.
“I said ‘Are you crazy? What are you doing up this late?’” he recalled during a news conference in late 2024. “She said she was replying to our supporters, thanking them and promising them to do a good job.”
In South Korea’s cutthroat politics, Ms. Kim became a favorite target of Mr. Yoon’s enemies. On social media, critics claimed she had changed her appearance with plastic surgery and interviewed men who claimed they met her when they said she worked as a hostess in a Seoul nightclub. She denied that and other lurid rumors about her past, including shamanism. Songs went viral that belittled her as a woman who used sex as a tool for climbing the social ladder.
Women’s rights groups bristled at such attacks as channeling the country’s misogynistic culture. But Ms. Kim also angered them by sympathizing with a politician convicted of sexual violence against his secretary. Her corruption scandals made her even harder to defend.
“For Yoon’s detractors, it was not enough to criticize him for his martial law and other mishandling of state affairs,” said Park Jia, vice chairwoman at the Seoul Women’s Association. “They wanted to humiliate him by digging up his wife’s past,” she said, and depict him as “a man who cannot even control his wife.”
During the election campaign, Ms. Kim apologized for inflating her résumé — two universities in Seoul later retracted her degrees citing plagiarism — and promised a humble wife’s role if Mr. Yoon was elected.
But she also seemed to set the tone for what was to come. In comments to a reporter that were secretly recorded, she said that if she “took power,” officials would go after journalists who had been digging up dirt on her.
Before long, presidential aides handpicked by her often ran the show in Mr. Yoon’s office, and bypassed more senior secretaries, according to Kim Dae-nam, a former Yoon aide, whose secretly recorded telephone conversations with reporters were leaked in 2024. Mr. Yoon’s office called Mr. Kim’s claims baseless, but reports about Ms. Kim’s influence piled up.
In her public actions, critics saw a sense of entitlement. When she attended a government event with her pet dog, Ms. Kim handed its leash over to Mr. Yoon’s chief of presidential staff, according to Youn Kun Young, a lawmaker who disclosed the episode in a parliamentary hearing. When Ms. Kim once visited Gyeongbok Palace in central Seoul, she sat on the royal throne, according to witnesses who testified in Parliament.
The Undoing
Ms. Kim seldom spoke in public. But she curated her public image by releasing a flood of handout photos of her accompanying Mr. Yoon on trips abroad, visiting military barracks, meeting poor children and cuddling pet dogs.
That image began crumbling when spy cam footage of Ms. Kim accepting a $2,200 Dior pouch from a visitor months after Mr. Yoon’s inauguration was made public in late 2023. More scandals involving her unfolded, but Mr. Yoon called them “fake news” spread by his enemies to “demonize” his wife.
Many critics began likening Ms. Kim to a “sorceress” manipulating the “blind” man they said Mr. Yoon was. Even the country’s conservative news media, which had supported Mr. Yoon, became exasperated.
“There is only one person — President Yoon Suk Yeol — who can clarify that Kim Keon Hee is not the president of South Korea,” Kim Sun Duk, an editorial writer at Dong-A Ilbo, a major conservative newspaper, wrote in October 2024. “We all know that he cannot. Therein lies the tragedy.”
By late 2024, most South Koreans supported the opposition’s demand for a special prosecutor to investigate allegations against Ms. Kim, according to surveys. Mr. Yoon had repeatedly opposed such bills, even as his approval ratings nose-dived below 20 percent.
“If they throw stones, I will take them and press on,” he said.
Mr. Yoon and Han Dong-hoon — the leader of the People Power Party, to which Mr. Yoon also belonged — became sworn enemies over their differences over Ms. Kim.
“Drag Han Dong-hoon to me so I can shoot him dead,” Mr. Yoon said when he discussed martial law with military generals over heavy drinking in October 2024, according to one of the officers there, Lt. Gen. Kwak Jong-geun.
But investigators said that Ms. Kim appeared unaware of Mr. Yoon’s martial law plans. She visited a plastic surgeon the evening that Mr. Yoon declared martial law. After it failed, Ms. Kim screamed at Mr. Yoon for “ruining everything,” according to prosecutors.
Earlier this month, a court sentenced Mr. Yoon to five years in prison in a case related to his martial law decree. A ruling in his insurrection case, in which prosecutors have sought the death sentence, is expected next month.
When Ms. Kim first appeared for questioning by investigators in August, she called herself “a nobody.” But the list of gifts they said she hoarded in return for favors included a gold turtle figurine, a luxury clutch bag, a $27,700 wristwatch, a $43,000 diamond necklace and a $97,000 painting. They said she also accepted another $43,000 necklace, plus two Chanel handbags, from the Unification Church, which they said sought government favors.
Ms. Kim’s lawyers vowed to protect her from “exaggerations and political framing” by prosecutors.
But she wondered whether she would ever live with Mr. Yoon again, said her lawyer, Yoo Jeong-hwa. Mr. Yoon also told a court last month that he did not expect to return home anytime soon.
“My wife is under arrest. What am I going to do even if I go home?” he said.
Choe Sang-Hun is the lead reporter for The Times in Seoul, covering South and North Korea.
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