South Korean minister apologises after husband breaks Covid rules for yacht-shopping trip to US 

Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha's spouse is in the spotlight 

Credit:  YONHAP/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

South Korea’s foreign minister is under growing pressure to resign after her husband defied the ministry’s advice against all but essential travel overseas and flew to the United States on Saturday. 

The public has been further enraged after it emerged that Lee Yill-Byung, a university professor and husband of Kang Kyung-wha, was travelling to the US to purchase a new yacht while many Koreans have lost their jobs and are struggling to get by as the coronavirus pandemic continues to impact society. 

The Chosun Ilbo newspaper accused Mrs Kang of “flagrant hypocrisy” after her ministry demanded that people skip this year’s Chuseok holidays, the equivalent of Thanksgiving and the most important holiday on the Korean calendar, to stop the spread of the coronavirus. 

Mrs Kang, of the Left-leaning Democratic Party, was quoted as saying that people’s “private lives are not an absolute right” as she ordered the public to stay at home. 

Local media have learned that her husband flew to Vietnam for a week in February, travelled to the French territory of Martinique shortly after returning and then went to Greece in June. 

Coronavirus South Korea Spotlight Chart — Cases default

Mr Lee was confronted by a television crew as he prepared to fly to the US on Saturday, saying: “The coronavirus epidemic is not going to disappear any time soon. I can’t sit at home all the time. I can’t keep worrying about other people’s lives as I live my own.” 

The following day, Mrs Kang told reporters that she was “sorry” about her husband’s decision to travel overseas, adding: “He has planned the trip for such a long time and postponed it several times, so it’s difficult for me to tell him not to go.” 

The opposition People Power Party has condemned Mr Lee’s actions, with a party official telling the Chosun Ilbo, “Small businesses are suffering from the epidemic, but a family member of a high-ranking government official is travelling and buying a yacht”.

The US has more than 7.6 million reported cases of the coronavirus and over 214,000 fatalities. South Korea, in contrast, has seen 24,164 cases and 422 deaths.

A professor of politics at a leading university in Seoul told The Telegraph that “People are really raging and the entire issue is escalating very rapidly.

“People are saying that the foreign minister needs to step down; it’s that serious”, the academic said. “The public can put up with a lot, but not this level of hypocrisy. And they are particularly disappointed that this is happening in a left-leaning party that was elected in large part as a protest against corruption in the previous government”.