Photo of man in luxury sneakers falsely identified as South Korean politician

Published on May 26, 2026 at 09:04
3 min read
By Hawon Jung, AFP South Korea

In the lead-up to South Korea's June 3 regional elections, a picture of a person wearing a pair of Hermes-branded sneakers circulated with a false claim that he was mayoral candidate Kim Sang-wook. But the photo, shared by social media users as well as a right-wing website and politicians, is not of Kim. The picture was originally published by a user unrelated to Kim and the man bowing is his acquaintance -- the owner of a local travel agency in Seoul.

"Representative Kim Sang-wook -- wearing Hermes sneakers and cosplaying as an average Joe," reads a Korean-language post shared on X on May 15, 2026.

The attached photo depicts a man in a business suit bowing deeply to another person, with his head nearly touching his knees.

His face is not fully visible, but he is wearing white sneakers with an orange-coloured "H" emblazoned on one of them.

Screenshot of the false post taken on May 26 with a red X added by AFP

South Koreans will head to the polls on June 3 to elect governors, mayors and other local representatives (archive link).

Kim, 49, is running for mayor in the southeastern city of Ulsan. He left the right-wing People Power Party (PPP) after criticising former president Yoon Suk Yeol for briefly imposing martial law in December 2024 (archive link).

Yoon's short-lived martial law decree plunged South Korea into crisis, leading to his impeachment (archived link). He was later sentenced to life in prison over several charges, including leading an insurrection.

In 2025, Kim joined the PPP's rival, the centre-left Democratic Party -- a move that angered some of his former colleagues and PPP supporters who labelled him as a "traitor" (archived link).

The image of the bowing man wearing Hermes shoes alongside false claims that it depicted Kim was widely shared across different social media platforms, including far-right forum Ilbe. A local media outlet also wrote about Kim purportedly wearing the shoes.

A former PPP lawmaker Jun Yeo-ok, now a political commentator, also reportedly shared the image on her YouTube channel, describing Kim as a "luxury fan who wears Hermes sneakers on no other than the campaign trail".

The Hermes shoes seen in the picture are priced at HK$9,100, or around $1,000, in the French luxury brand's Hong Kong website (archived link). They retail at higher prices through online sellers in South Korea (archived link).

The posts drew comments accusing Kim of being a "left-wing bourgeois" and a "hypocrite" for wearing the Hermes shoes.

But the man in the photo is not Kim.

'Who is that?'

A reverse image search led to an uncropped version of the photo shared by a local businessman on his personal Facebook account on May 12 (archive link).

In the caption, he refers to the person bowing to him by another name, Byung-yong.

Several comments also referred to the man bowing by the same name.

Yoo Byung-yong -- the head of a Seoul tour agency -- confirmed that the bowing man in the photo was him when contacted by AFP. The businessman on Facebook was a personal acquaintance of his, Yoo added.

Screenshot comparison of the false post (L) and the original post

Kim also posted on his official X and Instagram pages that the man in the photo was not him (archived here and here).

Sharing a screenshot of Jun's YouTube post, he wrote: "Former National Assembly member Jun Yeo-ok posted a weird photo. I'm not the person in that photo... who is that?"

Jun later apologised in a blog post for "causing confusion" over the photo, acknowledging that the man "turned out to be not Kim" (archived link).

Kim did not immediately respond to AFP's request for comment.

AFP has previously debunked misinformation targeting politicians ahead of elections in South Korea.

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