Star lawmaker's special lecture plan draws controversy

Rep. Ko Min-jung of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea attends a meeting of the Trade, Industry, Energy, SMEs and Startups Committee at the National Assembly, Tuesday. Captured from Ko Min-jung's Facebook

By Do Je-hae

Rep. Ko Min-jung of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) has come under fire for a series of special lectures being organized by her office, as she plans to include her husband as one of the lecturers.

During a recent Facebook post, the first-term lawmaker announced that her office would hold a 10-part lecture series with speakers from various fields, with Ko planning to give a speech on Aug. 5 on the subject of “participatory politics.”

The lecture series will take place at her office in Gwangjin-gu, the Seoul district she represents. The office is charging 200,000 won for the entire 10-part series.

It is not unusual for lawmakers to organize such events, but controversy emerged because of her choice to include her husband Cho Ki-young as one of the speakers. He is a poet and a homemaker.

Ko considered excluding her husband from the lectures after the negative media reports. “Besides being my husband, Cho is a poet. He was going to give a lecture on poetry and talk about the world from a poet's perspective,” Ko said on Facebook, Monday. “But if this makes people feel uncomfortable, I will exclude him from the list of speakers.”

The former presidential spokeswoman also said that Cho was also planning to share his story about parenting based on his experience at a work-from-home dad.

But her stance changed the next day after gathering opinions from her supporters on Facebook. “About 99 percent of commenters said they want the lecture to proceed as planned,” Ko said.

Some people have criticized that inviting a spouse to lectures could be seen as extending privilege at a time when controversy has been rampant over special favors for family members of ranking officials, especially since there is a fee for the lectures.

Regarding the fee, Ko's office said they are unable to provide free lectures because it would violate the Election Law, so they decided to collect money that would simply cover the cost of running the events.