DongA Ilbo newspaper on Tuesday ran a sarcastic editorial on the love child allegations of Prosecutor General Chae Dong-wook, who was accused by Chosun Ilbo of having a child through an extramarital affair.

Choi Yeong-hae, an editorial writer for the influential paper, wrote a fictional letter to Chae as the prosecutor’s alleged 11-year-old son. In the letter, “Chae’s son” asks him why people are telling the boy that Chae is not his father.

“What are they talking about? I’m not your son? I was so happy when you became the chief prosecutor,” he said in the letter.

The boy asked why so many people in South Korea hated Chae, wondering if it had anything to do with Chae’s recent investigation into the National Intelligence Service’s alleged interference in last year’s presidential election or prosecution’s crackdown of ex-President Chun Doo-hwan’s unpaid fines.

The child also complained of the paternity tests that Chae had welcomed earlier.

“People even say they should take my blood and hair to check if I really am your son. Are these people crazy? Auntie said mom was crying because of them,” the supposed child asks.

Contrary to the letter’s claims, the woman pinpointed as Chae’s mistress flat-out said that the child is not the chief prosecutor’s son. Days after the Chosun Ilbo first raised the allegation, a woman name Lim came forward and explained that she only used Chae’s name so that her son would “not be looked down on by others.”

Conflicting reports have since surfaced, but it is yet unclear whether Chae actually fathered the child or if he had anything to do with Lim at all.

Critics bashed Choi for writing a baseless editorial speculating that all the allegations against Chae were true.

“I am appalled at the fact that such gibberish survived to be published in the morning edition. In a paper where numerous people spend hours fixing the smallest of typos, did that look okay? The newspaper itself is a problem,” wrote one Twitter user.

Others expressed disgust at the editorial supposedly using an 11-year-old child to attack someone out of political interest.

“It is grotesque. The absurdity of substituting an editorial for fiction and the childish nature of the ‘literary imagination,’ and the viciousness of using a fifth-grader as a tool for political feud is all combined,” said social critic and Dongyang University professor Chin Jung-kwon.



By Yoon Min-sik
(minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com)