![Chanel for Kim Keon-hee and Ferragamo for Imelda··· ‘luxury-holic’ first ladies, a theory of parallels [Soso World by Lee Yoon-jung]](https://i.headtopics.com/images/2026/4/29/kyunghyang/6710497110101104862-6710497110101104862-C69D27758F7C8291731D511F312A620C.webp)
At times, courts record the desires of an era most vividly. The appellate ruling in the case against Kim Keon-hee, tried on charges including stock...
*‘Soso World’: We share stories of a world that was modest yet clamorous. Kim Keon-hee, who was brought to trial on charges including Deutsch Motors stock manipulation and receiving money and valuables from the Unification Church, listens to the appellate verdict at the Seoul High Court in Seocho-gu, Seoul, on the 28th.
On this day, she received a harsher sentence than at first instance, four years in prison. Yonhap News At times, courts record the desires of an era most vividly. The appellate ruling in the case against Kim Keon-hee, tried on charges including stock manipulation and taking valuables, did the same.
The bench laid bare how the mechanisms of luxury and influence peddling that hovered around power actually worked. The court imposed four years in prison, a fine of 50 million won, a forfeiture of 20.94 million won, and confiscation of a high-priced necklace.
Even the Chanel bag priced around 8 million won that had been acquitted at first instance was included in the guilty findings. The ruling clarified the collusive structure between luxury gifts and solicitations that Korean society had long tolerated.
The luxury goods Ms. Kim received as bribes were symbols that reveal the grammar of conspicuous consumption in this era. These were brands everyone recognizes as valuable without being as overt as cash, items presented under the name of taste but in reality handed over with hopes of exerting influence.
Items revealed during the proceedings included three Chanel bags and shoes, and a Graff Butterfly collection necklace known to be in the 62 to 63 million won range. Chanel products presumed to have been received by Kim Keon-hee.
Screenshot from the Chanel website The black chain-embellished bag was thought to be a Chanel Classic Flap Bag in black lambskin, an iconic Chanel piece, priced around 8 million won at the time. The yellow item was presumed to be a limited-edition model in the Chanel WOC wallet-on-chain mini-bag line, mentioned as trading around 10 million won on the resale market.
The white bag was a Chanel 19 handbag in glossy lambskin, with an official price around 10.5 million won. These pieces are widely regarded not as simple consumer goods but as representative luxury assets that rise in price over time.
Chanel has implemented price increases annually or from time to time, and popular models like the Classic Flap Bag have often jumped by several million won within a few years. Limited editions or discontinued models can even command premiums on the secondhand market.
They were expensive at the moment of gifting, and they were items whose value was likely to hold or climb as time passed. On June 29, 2022 local time, at a dinner meeting with overseas Koreans at the Mandarin Oriental Ritz Madrid in Spain, Kim Keon-hee takes part in the national ceremony while wearing a Van Cleef necklace.
Yonhap News To this was added a necklace from Graff’s Butterfly collection, a diamond high jewelry brand. Founded in 1960 in London, Graff is an ultra high-end jewelry house known for dealing in some of the world’s rarest diamonds and for high-end setting techniques.
If Cartier or Tiffany is widely known as luxury jewelry, Graff is often seen as a step above, closer to the ‘market for the ultra rich’. Royal figures, global conglomerate families, Middle Eastern royals, and top Hollywood stars form the core clientele.
In Korea as well, it is far removed from brands that ordinary consumers can readily approach in department stores. Even entry pieces often run into the tens of millions of won, and flagship collections commonly exceed one hundred million won.
The necklace in the 60 million won range mentioned in this case is closer to an asset-like luxury aimed at the top one percent than to a mainstream luxury accessory. If a Chanel bag is a mass luxury whose price almost anyone can recognize, Graff serves as a symbol of ostentatious ultra luxury accessible only to a few.
Objects of envy for everyone, yet conferring a sense of superiority because only a few can own them. These two sentiments were exploited for luxury-based solicitations. Kim Keon-hee stands trial.
Press photo pool Scenes in which luxury goods appear behind the dark dealings of power are not unique to Korea. World political history is filled with first ladies who fell because of luxury. The most famous is Imelda Marcos of the Philippines.
From 1965, when her husband Ferdinand Marcos took power, until he was ousted by a people’s revolution in 1986, she served as virtually another center of power. When Malacaang Palace was opened to the public right after the revolution, the world was stunned.
Thousands of pairs of shoes, mink coats, Cartier and Bulgari jewelry, and goods from Gucci and Ferragamo poured out. It was not merely that Imelda enjoyed extravagance. In an era when most Filipinos suffered from poverty and debt, the leader’s family filled palace life with European luxury.
Thereafter, Imelda shoes became a metaphor for political greed. Imelda Marcos looks at jewelry while attending a store opening in Manila, the Philippine capital, in 2006. AP Rosmah Mnsor of Malaysia offers a similar case.
As the spouse of Prime Minister Najib Razak from 2009 to 2018, she wielded formidable influence. After the 1MDB sovereign wealth fund scandal broke, Malaysian investigators raided residences linked to the prime minister in 2018.
The seized items revealed then shocked the world: dozens of Herms Birkin bags, hundreds of Chanel and Louis Vuitton bags, and thousands of pieces of jewelry and watches. Individual Birkin bags were priced from the tens of millions to over one hundred million won.
Public anger swelled as suspicions of misusing public funds overlapped with the trove of luxury goods. Leila Trabelsi of Tunisia is also hard to leave out. As the wife of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who took power in 1987, she fled overseas during the Arab Spring in 2011.
Her clan was notorious for conspicuous consumption of French luxury brands such as Dior, Chanel, and Cartier, as well as lavish real estate and jewelry. This unfolded while unemployment and rising prices fueled growing anger among the young.
What was a period of economic despair for the public became a luxury shopping season for the ruling elite. Suzanne Mubarak of Egypt provides another example. From 1981 to 2011, she reigned as first lady alongside the Hosni Mubarak regime.
After the regime collapsed, allegations emerged over family wealth and special favors, followed by accounts of European luxury shopping, high-priced jewelry, and overseas assets. The public grasped the reality of corrupt power through gemstones and luxury goods.
Luxury goods are not the essence of the crime. But they vividly show how far power has been privatized. Around the world, spouses of those in power have long stood on the boundary between public responsibility and the private sphere.
Because they are unelected, because they are family, their influence has remained outside official records. In reality, however, the spouse of the highest officeholder carries powerful symbolism along with unofficial clout.
The moment solicitations are traded toward that status and luxury goods are deployed as the medium, they no longer remain merely personal tastes or private gifts. Imelda’s three thousand pairs of shoes, left behind in haste while fleeing protesters, ultimately met their end in a Philippine museum display case, gnawed by mold and termites.
Even luxury said to appreciate over time ends up bearing different meanings depending on whose hands it passed through. Some things remain as heritage, others as art, but luxury tainted by greed remains only as evidence of corruption. 한글기사 원본
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