Man booked for posing as Harvard-educated Bloomberg reporter covering Rep. Lee Jun-seok

Seoul Jungnang Police Station / Korea Times file

A man who allegedly impersonated a Bloomberg reporter during South Korea’s 2022 presidential election has been booked on fraud charges, police said Thursday.

The Seoul Jungnang Police Station said on Friday that it has launched an investigation into the suspect, identified as Kim.

He allegedly posed as a reporter from Bloomberg’s Seoul bureau and borrowed money from fellow journalists while falsely offering them job opportunities at the international news agency.

Kim, who was nicknamed the “markman” or dedicated beat reporter for then-presidential candidate Lee Jun-seok of the minor Reform Party, introduced himself during the election as a Harvard University history graduate and a journalist with Bloomberg Korea.

He reportedly carried a fake business card and a fabricated resume while accompanying reporters from legitimate Korean media outlets on the campaign trail.

He also told fellow reporters that Bloomberg was planning to launch a new corporate entity in Korea and offered to help them transfer to the company. Some journalists even received forged job offer letters from him and submitted resignations to their current employers, according to reports.

The scam unraveled after skeptical reporters contacted Bloomberg’s Seoul office, only to discover that Kim had no ties to the company and that all his claims were false. Several of the deceived journalists had also lent Kim money.

The victims recently filed complaints, and police are now investigating the full extent of Kim’s actions and whether more individuals were defrauded.

Rep. Lee Jun-seok told Yonhap News, “All he did was give me a business card saying he was a foreign correspondent. I have no further knowledge of the matter.”

This article from the Hankook Ilbo, the sister publication of The Korea Times, is translated by a generative AI and edited by The Korea Times.