#133. 내로남불 -- Romance for me, infidelity for you

One of the things that always impress me when I meet a foreigner trying to learn Korean is when they use a 사자성어 (four-letter proverbs) in their sentences. Korean has an abundance of four-letter proverbs in its vocabulary, and even among native Koreans, knowing a lot of 사자성어 is a mark of your intellect, as these often come with a back story, or you simply need to know a lot of hanja to decipher its meanings. Only a well-read person could casually throw in 사자성어 into their daily conversations, and it is a sign that you are proficient in hanja, history, and philosophy. You might say something like:

"지수는 사자성어를 많이 써서 정말 유식해보여" (Jisoo sounds so smart because she uses so many four-letter proverbs.)

Here's an example of a nice 사자성어: A king is like a raft, while the people are like the water (군주민수). While the people lift and worship the king much like water does a raft, it is also water that sinks the raft. Deep, right?

Of course, out of tens of thousands of 사자성어 that exist, an average Korean probably knows a hundred or less. And why not? The ignorance of the four-letter proverbs doesn't really hinder your ability to have an exciting conversation.

Nonetheless, it is still fun to try to sound smarter. And so, Koreans started coming up with fake four-letter proverbs. In this new wave of slangs in the era of the internet, the reigning philosophy became that "anything four-letter goes". Unlike the classical four-letter proverbs that always come from hanja, these new four-letter proverbs are often an abbreviation of an existing phrase.

Koreans like shortening sentences and words already (for example, "남자친구 (boyfriend)" becomes "남친", a male friend becomes "남사친", meaning "남자친구아니고 사람 친구 (not a boyfriend, just a human friend)", and "iced americano" becomes "아아", short for "아이스아메리카노"). So shortening particular phrases that get used a lot into four-letters became a fun game.

One of the most common "fake" four-letter proverbs that are being used nowadays is "내로남불." It is shortened from the phrase

"내가 하면 로맨스, 남이 하면 불륜." (Romance for me, infidelity for the others.)

 As you might easily guess (and these "fake" four-letter proverbs are much easier to guess the meanings!), this phrase is used to criticize someone who is overly generous with themselves, while using a much harsher standard for the others. And of course, everyone knows that someone who found the love of their lives for the fifth time, while being married. While they might romanticize their situation as a romantic escapade, these people are usually not so tolerant towards the others (or heaven forbid, should their partner cheat on them!)

Take Cho Kuk (조국), for example, who is the newfound Korean icon of 내로남불.

Meet Cho Kuk. His name is synonymous to "my country (조국)"; and his Twitter handle, @patriamea, of course, means "my country" in Latin!

He is the newly appointed minister of justice of Korea. Prior to his political life, he was a professor of law at the Seoul National University, which is the most prestigious of all universities in Korea. He was actively involved in politics since his college days, but his fame seems at least partially based on his good looks and his Twitter account, in which he did not hesitate to criticize the injustice of the Korean society.

For example, in this tweet, he criticizes the competitiveness of the Korean society. He says: "We all like the rags-to-riches stories (in Korean: a dragon rose from a small stream). However, our society now is a rich-gets-richer type society, and the chances of going from rags to riches is very low. Not everyone needs to be a dragon, and there is no need. The more important is that we can be happy in our small streams living as fish, frogs, or crayfish. Let's not compete unnecessarily, and make beautiful streams instead!"

Many people found his words comforting, direct, and inspiring. However, when he was named by the president to be the next minister of justice, stories started coming out.

One such story concerned his daughter, Cho Min (조민), who is currently a medical student at Pusan National University. The stories alleged that Cho Min was struggling, essentially failing her classes every semester. Given that her undergraduate degree was from Korea University (one of the SKY universities and very prestigious!), this was very puzzling.

This is Cho Min.

The stories then said that while Cho Min was a high school student, she interned at a professor's medical lab at Dankook University (not as prestigious as SKY, but still 인서울, in-Seoul, and a well-known university) for two weeks, and became a first author of a paper. People suspected that she was accepted to Korea University based on her extracurricular activities, and not necessarily her grades.

Given that her father was being considered for the position of minister of justice, an investigation launched both at the official level involving the prosecution, and also the netizens of Korea. It was revealed that her high school grades were indeed very bad (to be fair, her high school is quite competitive, but she also took an SAT test, and received a score of 1970 out of 2400, which is certainly not at the level suitable for elite universities.)

Furthermore, her father explained that she was made the first author of her medical paper because she translated everything to English, as her English was very good from having lived abroad for two years when she was a child. Nonetheless, the committee of ethics of the Korean Society of Pathologists found this to be unethical practice, and retracted her paper. It seems likely (from the interviews of the officials who were involved with her admission) that this paper played a large role in her admission, and that she was admitted to this lab in the first place due to her father's connections.

It also seems that her parents (both professors at the time) forged awards and certificates for prestigious internships to support her application to the medical schools; while all this is still under investigation, the prosecution alleges that some definitive and objective evidence proving forgery were uncovered.

The students of Korea University were understandably enraged; they protested on their campus calling for the cancellation of her admission and to revoke her degree from Korea University. The university officials haven't responded yet. This clever poster reads "조국 조민 국민 조롱," or "Cho Kuk and Cho Min have mocked the people."

And so people started using the phrase "내로남불" more and more often. While Cho Kuk seemed perfectly happy to advise the Koreans not to strive so hard for the top, he was doing everything he can to ensure that his daughter will have the perfect pedigree and the perfect career (it is alleged but not at all proven that Cho Kuk may have pressured the medical school to not to fail his daughter).

People started saying things like:

"조국 내로남불 진짜 너무하네." (Cho Kuk went way too far with his 내로남불 attitude.)

"조국이 저정도로 내로남불이었다니, 완전 실망이야." (I didn't realize that Cho Kuk was so hypocritical, I'm so disappointed.)

And honestly, there are many other allegations (such as the one that Cho Kuk used his governmental position of senior secretary for civil affairs to have insider knowledge of governmental investments, and that he invested inappropriately) concerning his behaviour. No single article could summarize everything that has come to light, as Cho Kuk's entire family (including his mother, his cousins and his children) are under investigation, and his wife alone is under suspicion for having committed ten different crimes (including forgery of her daughter's university application material).

Millions of people came out to protest this injustice.

This political scandal is still ongoing, and Cho Kuk is still under investigation. Unfortunately, the president still saw it fit to appoint him as the minister of justice, and Cho Kuk's first mission as the minister of justice is to reform the prosecution. His policies have clear conflicts of interest and it looks like it will cause quite a stir in the near future (his nephew and his brother are already arrested, and his wife and his mother are under investigation; rumour has it that Cho Kuk is the ultimate target for the prosecution.)

Because of all this, and the nationwide outrage, a new phrase is coming into existence: Instead of 내로남불, people started saying "조로남불" (조국이 하면 로맨스, 남이 하면 불륜: Romance for Cho Kuk, Infidelity for everyone else.)

I'm not sure exactly how this scandal will calm down; I'm guessing that Cho Kuk will have to step down (previously, when another minister came under the investigation of prosecution, he called for immediate resignation of this minister via his Twitter account, another 조로남불!) but anything seems possible in this crazy story, which most Koreans find to be more intriguing than K-Dramas.

If you're interested in the Korean politics, I'd say that this is definitely worth following, as it has been interesting, entertaining, outrageous, and just crazy.