The night of the 13th of last month, the day before the Lunar New Year holiday began, a call came in. The caller was Cho Myung-hyun. Though he said it was a well-wishing call for the holiday, I felt uneasy for a long time after hanging up. It was because I thought about how much he, the whistleblower in the corporate card scandal involving President Lee Jae Myung and his spouse, had been walking a thorny path since the current administration took office.
His ordeal began in late January 2022, ahead of the 20th presidential election, with an SBS report referring to him as “Mr. A, a former Gyeonggi Provincial Government Grade 7 official.” Reports followed about corporate card payments for beef, hot pot, sushi, and other items. With evidence including nine months of phone recordings and Telegram conversations, refutation was nearly impossible. Yoon Suk-yeol candidate secured 247,000 more votes than Lee Jae Myung candidate in that election, so if not for the exposé, the current president’s term might have started in May 2022.
The problem was Cho’s life after the exposé. His reclusive life, hiding in fear of retaliation after the news reports, did not change even after the election. He moved urgently to a place no one would know, and to make a living, he took a night delivery job. “I couldn’t handle the weight of the packages, tearing my arm and back muscles, and lost nearly 15 kg” (‘A Corporate Card Never Experienced Before’). Amid this, he responded to summons from the...
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