Marie Antoinette, the famous, and the last Queen of France prior to the French Revolution, is known for many things.
While her husband, King Louis XVI, was the ultimate ruler of France, Antoinette as Queen played a crucial part in the social and political life of the court. Her responsibilities included representing the monarchy, participating in ceremonial duties, and influencing matters.
With her power, she is known for many things, including an icon for fashion, her role in the French Revolution, her tragic end, and so forth.
But one of the most identifying things about the Queen is that, she had an extravagant lifestyle.
"Qu'ils mangent de la brioche" in French, which commonly translated as "Let them eat cake," implies a lack of understanding of the hardships faced by the poor, as if suggesting that if the poor don't have bread, they should indulge in a more luxurious alternative, like cake.
Fast forward, in the modern day world, South Korea’s First Lady, Kim Keon Hee, is being referred to as Marie Antoinette in relation to the "Dior bag scandal," after a video went viral.
South Korea's First Lady Kim Keon Hee has stirred up a controversy, after she was found accepting an expensive Dior bag, worth ₩3 million (around $2,000), as a gift.
According to the law in South Korea, it is illegal for public officials and their spouses to accept any gift worth more than ₩1 million in one go or a total of 3 million won within a year.
But in this case, the Dior bag costs three times as much.
Kim Keon Hee received the Dior bag as a gift presented to her by a pastor.
But the pastor, Choi Jae-young, a Korean-American descent, also set up a hidden camera by embedding it in his watch, where he secretly filmed himself buying the greyish-blue calfskin Dior bag from a store, showing the price tag.
After the purchase, he visits Covana Contents, a company in Seoul owned by the First Lady, and gifting the handbag to her.
There, she asks him, "Why do you keep bringing me these things?"
Reportedly, the bag was bought by pastor Choi Jae-young in September 2022.
While the video doesn't show Kim Keon Hee accepting the bag, the presidential office confirmed that the existence of the bad, and said that it was "being managed and stored as a property of the government."
This video was uploaded to the internet, and quickly caused uproar.
The video has caused an uproar in South Korea, with people demanding an explanation from the president about his wife's actions.
With South Korea’s general election only months away, President Yoon Suk-yeol has demanded that Han Dong-hoon, his hand-picked choice to run the leader-less ruling People Power Party (PPP), resign from his post as interim party leader.
This sent the PPP into a turmoil.
It was Kim Kyung-yul, another PPP leader, who initially compared the 51-year-old First Lady with Marie Antoinette, the notorious French queen known for her extravagant lifestyle.
"The first lady was deeply shocked and hurt by Kim’s comments, which suggested that she should be decapitated like Marie Antoinette," the person said. "She said that it was hard to comprehend why Kim Kyung-yul had to make such extreme comments in order to run for a seat in the Mapo B constituency."
In a YouTube video, Kim Kyung-yul suggested that "an apology, whether from the president, the first lady, or both, might be a way to soothe the feelings and hearts of the people."
Opposition Democratic Party (DP) stated that the ruling party cannot dismiss the issue by apologizing.
President Yoon also feels sorry, thinking that his wife has been demonized because of him.”
Yoon also reportedly felt deeply upset that Kim Kyung-yul and Han Dong-hoon, his hand-picked choice to run PPP, have brought up the First Lady's acceptance of a luxury handbag.
The President’s Office has explained that the real issue here is that the whole thing has been set up with bad intentions and that it was a deliberate trap."
Regardless, Han refuses presidential office's request to resign, and that the disapproval rating for President Yoon Suk Yeol hit its highest level in about nine months following the revelation.
The disapproval rate for Yoon rose to 63% from 58% in just a week.
The Dior handbag costs some $2,000, expensive, but not that extravagant for a government leader.
But still, with his wife accepting it as a gift, her husband, South Korea’s leader, could pay a much higher price for the political scandal it has set off.
This gets worse for President Yoon Suk Yeol, because the mounting public pressure not only could damage his right-wing party’s chances in crucial legislative elections, but also worsen amid rising threats from North Korea.
It's worth noting that the pastor who gifted the handbag, is an advocate of friendlier relations with the North, toward which Yoon has taken a hard-line approach.
Choi, the pastor, said in an interview that he met with the First Lady twice, in hopes of having conversations with her about Yoon’s tough policies toward the North.
Kim Keon Hee was referred to South Korea's Marie Antoinette because Antoinette, even during the hardship of many of her people, she maintained her lavish lifestyle and attitude.
As queen, she was accused of doing many things. But regardless the bad things she was accused of were true, the accusations damaged her reputation further.
During the French Revolution, she became known as Madame Déficit because the country's financial crisis was blamed on her lavish spending and her opposition to social and financial reforms proposed by Anne Robert Jacques Turgot and Jacques Necker.
