Poverty porn

By Kang Hyun-kyung

The first time I heard of the term, "poverty porn," was in late April 2019. I was doing a phone interview with photographer Cho Jang-sok, who was at that time preparing for a trip to Africa for his photo project. Speaking of poverty porn, Cho said he was sick of the practices non-profit groups had used to raise money for Africa, and said that Africa was misrepresented in such images. He was referring to aid groups' typical fundraising campaigns on TV that feature images of malnourished children desperate for help with flies buzzing around their faces.

Poverty porn has triggered a debate in Korea recently after President Yoon Suk-yeol and his wife, first lady Kim Keon-hee, returned to Seoul following their official trip to Cambodia and Indonesia for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the G-20 summits, respectively.

A couple of photos featuring the first lady holding a sick Cambodian boy in her arms, taken in the boy's home in Phnom Penh, have triggered a debate about poverty porn between the presidential office and the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK). DPK first-term lawmaker Jang Kyung-tae was the first to raise the criticism of the first lady, saying that she took advantage of the poverty-stricken boy's situation to elicit an emotional response, accusing her of having used other people's poverty and pain to boost her image.

The DPK lawmaker's accusations made some ruling People Power Party (PPP) lawmakers uncomfortable. PPP floor leader Joo Ho-young reacted that Rep. Jang's comments were "personally insulting and anti-women." A war of words has followed since, pitting the rival parties against each other for days. And their quarrel has developed into a legal fight as the presidential office took legal action against the DPK lawmaker for "spreading false information."

I found a crucial point missing in this debate about poverty porn. Few have mentioned whether the Cambodian child captured in the photos gave the presidential office permission to use those images or not.

I am old-school and was taught not to tell others about your good deeds or brag about them, even when you had done something good. This bit of traditional wisdom is still valid today because those who share their good work publicly may face unintended consequences. In this era of digital information, revealing someone else's personal information without their prior consent is a violation of Korea's Personal Information Protection Act.

I don't know whether the photos released by the presidential office were taken with prior permission from the Cambodian boy or his family. If no such procedure was followed, I think the publication of those photos could do harm to the child's dignity.

On the other hand, I think that what the first lady did in Cambodia is laudable, in that, with the released photos, she raised the issue of how difficult it could be for a child born into a poor family to access necessary medical treatment in developing countries.

However, the way the first lady's awareness campaign in Cambodia became known to the public was problematic if prior consent from those whose photos were taken was not given.

Public opinion polls show that the Korean public has certain expectations about first ladies and that they want them to keep a low profile ― instead of trying to steal the show ― and to take care of the poorest of the poor who are unable to have their basic human needs met.

First lady Kim's visit to the child's home and a related clinic run by a Korean pediatrician in Phnom Penh, was the right thing to do. However, if there were any procedural flaws, I think there should be efforts to fix them.

The poverty porn controversy reminded me of former first lady Kim Yoon-ok's visit to a clinic in an urban slum area in Peru back in 2008.

Kim visited the Peru-Korea Maternal Infant Care Clinic in Pachacutec in November 2008 on the sidelines of the official trip of her husband, then President Lee Myung-bak, to Peru for summits with his Peruvian counterpart.

The clinic was a game-changer for Pachacutec's infant mortality rate.

Before the clinic was set up there, Pachacutec, 40 kilometers northeast of Lima, was an urban slum notorious for high infant mortality rates because of the poor health conditions of mothers and babies and the lack of medical facilities.

Things changed after Korea's state aid agency-funded clinic was established. During my field trip to Pachacutec in 2011 to cover how Korea's overseas aid programs changed locals' livelihoods, I learned that infant mortality in the area had dramatically dropped to zero as women in the neighborhood were able to get necessary medical and health treatment at the clinic.

At the time, I heard from an official from the then-presidential office that first lady Kim had become emotional and wept, while learning about the sufferings of mothers and their newborn babies in Pachacutec before the establishment of the clinic. As the mother of several adult children, she came to sympathize with Pachacutec's mothers. Her aide said that the first lady shared with others what she saw and heard in Peru several times.

The touching story of the then-first lady's visit to Peru became known years later as I contacted a then-presidential office official to cover this "miracle" in one of Peru's urban slum areas. There was no poverty porn controversy here at that time, maybe because there were no photos revealing the vulnerability of those impoverished Peruvians.