{"id":19173,"date":"2024-11-27T10:25:40","date_gmt":"2024-11-27T10:25:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/?p=19173"},"modified":"2024-11-27T10:25:40","modified_gmt":"2024-11-27T10:25:40","slug":"south-korean-stars-baby-scandal-sparks-national-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/?p=19173","title":{"rendered":"South Korean star's baby scandal sparks national debate"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A South Korean actor\u2019s revelation that he fathered a child with a woman to whom he is not married has triggered a national debate over celebrity conduct and non-traditional family structures.<\/p>\n

Jung Woo-sung, a 51-year-old A-lister in South Korea\u2019s film industry, confirmed via his agency on Sunday that he is the father of 35-year-old model Moon Ga-bi\u2019s newborn son.<\/p>\n

While Jung pledged to \u201cfulfil his responsibilities\u201d as the father, his silence on whether he plans to marry Moon drew fierce backlash in the conservative country where births outside marriage are seen as taboo.<\/p>\n

But some progressive voices have defended Jung, noting a shift in South Korea\u2019s attitudes towards diverse family structures.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Moon announced her child\u2019s birth via Instagram on Friday, without mentioning the father, describing the pregnancy as \u201cunexpected\u201d and saying she had been \u201ccompletely unprepared for the sudden news\u201d. <\/p>\n

Two days later, Jung\u2019s agency Artist Company released a statement confirming that \u201cthe baby Moon revealed on her social media is Jung Woo-sung\u2019s son\u201d.<\/p>\n

The statement further noted that Jung and Moon were \u201cdiscussing the best way to raise the child\u201d.<\/p>\n

It triggered outrage that quickly spread across the country, triggering a slate of opinion pieces in tabloids, spurring online debate and eliciting comments from national politicians.<\/p>\n

Online, the response was largely critical towards Jung, whose prolific film career has made him a household name in South Korea.<\/p>\n

Many commentators seemed to believe the actor had tarnished an otherwise upstanding and squeaky clean image, with some expressing disappointment that the former United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees ambassador \u201ccan\u2019t accept his own child\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cJung Woo-sung is pretending to be a good guy saying he will fulfil all his duty\u2026 A child does not grow on money alone,\u201d wrote one commenter on Naver News, South Korea\u2019s largest news aggregate website.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a problem not marrying after having a child. It\u2019s that he pretended to be such an ethical person so far,\u201d wrote another.<\/p>\n

Speaking to conservative news outlet JoongAng, an unnamed lawmaker from the right-wing People Power Party described Jung\u2019s decision to have a child outside marriage as \u201csomething unthinkable in this country of social mores”.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo matter how much the times are changing, Korea\u2019s tradition and public sentiment must be kept (righteous),\u201d the lawmaker said.<\/p>\n

A recent social survey by South Korea\u2019s statistics agency found that 37% of people believed it was acceptable to have a child outside marriage – an almost 15% increase since 2012.<\/p>\n

Of those who said marriage was necessary, more than 72% were above the age of 60 – with younger respondents increasingly less likely to take that view.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Other lawmakers have defended Jung, with Lee So-young, a member of the Democratic Party of Korea, saying that \u201cdeciding to live with someone is a deeply personal and existential choice\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo assume that simply having a child obligates people to marry and take on the duties of cohabitation and mutual support feels suffocating,\u201d Lee wrote on Facebook on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course, there\u2019s nothing wrong with being \u2018normal\u2019\u2026 [But] even if society appears to have a standard of \u2018normal\u2019, every life is unique in its own way.<\/p>\n

\u201cPerhaps a better society is one that accepts and respects such differences without judgment,\u201d she added. \u201cThat\u2019s what I believe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kyunghyang, a progressive major newspaper, put out an editorial piece noting that while some voices have pushed for traditional values, “also rising is the voice that our society must think of the diverse shapes families take”.<\/p>\n

“It makes one hope that celebrities having babies outside of marriage, like Jung and Moon, will help change the public view which today is against [such] births.”<\/p>\n

South Korea has a notoriously high-pressure entertainment industry, with celebrities often held to inordinately high social standards and placed under extreme scrutiny. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

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Source: <\/em> www.bbc.com\u2026<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A South Korean actor\u2019s revelation that he fathered a child with a woman to whom he is not married has triggered a national debate over celebrity conduct and non-traditional family structures. Jung Woo-sung, a 51-year-old A-lister in South Korea\u2019s film industry, confirmed via his agency on Sunday that he is the father of 35-year-old model […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}