'Beyond the Dior Bag': Lifting the Veil on Korea’s Highest Circle of Power

From luxury scandal to power anatomy: Rev. Abraham Jae-young Choi’s “Beyond the Dior Bag” reveals Korea’s inner circle with precision and restraint.

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA, SOUTH KOREA, November 25, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- New Journalist Today announces the start of serial publication of “Beyond the Dior Bag: Lifting the Veil on Korea’s Highest Circle of Power,” a new book by Rev. Abraham Jae-young Choi scheduled for release in early 2026. The work re-examines the much-discussed Dior bag incident—already covered by The Guardian, Reuters, and TIME—not as a luxury scandal, but as a case study of how power in Korea performs, conceals, and reveals itself.

The serialization will run in both Korean and English on New Journalist Today’s Ghost-based platform starting from November 30(Korean Standard Time).

Media outlets that register for free on the website may republish the serialized articles at no cost. Non-media readers can access the series by completing a simple free membership.

From its opening chapter, Choi declares his intent “to record the other side of power with the feeling of throwing a lunchbox bomb.” The metaphor evokes Korea’s independence fighters under Japanese rule, who smuggled explosives hidden in lunch tins into government offices. To “throw a lunchbox bomb” means to enter the center of authority with outward calm, strike from within through evidence, and accept that such an act may cost everything. For Choi, documentation itself becomes a moral weapon.

The title matters. Beyond the Dior Bag argues that the handbag is not the subject but the symbol—a doorway to larger questions: What is the true nature of proximity to power? What are the ethics of recording it? Where does faith end and politics begin?

Choi positions himself as both insider and observer. He recounts his meeting with “V Zero,” his codename for Kim Keon-hee, former First Lady and wife of ex-president Yoon Suk Yeol, describing the exact moment the Dior bag was handed over. He writes that he entered the room “like throwing a lunchbox bomb,” fully aware that what he captured would become part of the historical record. The book reconstructs that encounter frame by frame—the tilt of the wristwatch camera, the angle of the smile, the still air between words—offering an almost forensic account of a scene few were meant to witness.

Yet the narrative moves beyond a single event to examine method and psychology. Choi calls himself “a subordinate treated like a VIP,” constantly welcomed yet monitored. He introduces the phrase “the resolve of someone who keeps his manners”—the discipline to stand firm without raising one’s voice. In his telling, politeness is not submission but resistance through composure.

Choi’s dual identity anchors the project. He is both pastor and undercover journalist, roles he treats not as contradiction but as design. Faith shapes his moral lens; journalism shapes his precision. He calls this blend “the double performance of politeness and coldness,” describing himself as “a stubborn architect of proof.” The Dior scene, he notes, was practiced “a hundred times” in advance: the camera angle, the posture, the pacing. Nothing was accidental.

What matters, Choi insists, is not the expensive item but what the camera recorded around it—“not only the object, but the question toward the power-holder and the answer.” His footage, notes, and reflections seek to expose the structure that allowed that gift to carry meaning in the first place. The project is not a leak and not revenge. It is, he writes, “a record of public ethics and power oversight.” Its purpose is to build an archive that will outlast political cycles and remain accessible as a civic document.

One line distills his thesis: “Record does not remain as anger; it remains as resolve.” Anger fades, he argues, but a record endures—continuing to question authority long after others have moved on. Beyond the Dior Bag therefore aims not to inflame but to preserve: an act of witness that transforms emotion into evidence.

Rev. Choi describes the work as “an archive of one of the most sensitive contact points in modern Korean political memory.” He writes that its purpose is not to describe power but to record it—and place that record in full public view.

BYUNG KEE PARK
New Journalist Today
media@newjournalist.kr
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