“There Can’t Be a Divorce—I Need My Slave”... ‘Boxing Champion’ Husband’s Outrageous Remarks Make Seo Jang-hoon Explode, Too

[Financial News] The behavior of a former professional boxing champion who makes his wife shoulder all the housework despite both spouses working—and even calls her “my slave”—has been revealed on a TV program, sparking widespread public outrage.
On the 15th, JTBC’s entertainment show “Divorce Re-Boot Camp” featured the conflict-filled daily life of a “champion couple,” both former boxers who each run a gym.
The husband once won the National Pro Rookie Championship, became an Oriental champion and rose as high as No. 9 in the WBC world rankings. His wife also had an impressive career: she turned professional at 29, defended her world champion title five times and stayed in the ring until she was 45. The two met as teacher and student and later married. They have two sons who are promising young boxers.
But unlike their impressive records in the ring, their home life was trapped in an extreme patriarchal power structure. Both worked and finished work after 10 p.m., yet all the housework and tending to her husband fell entirely to the wife. Lying on a bed in the living room, the husband gestured for her to bring him the remote and some water, then tossed the socks he had been wearing toward her and made her pick them up.
The wife said, “I feel like I’ve become my husband’s hands and feet, and it irritates me. But if I show my displeasure, he gets even angrier, so I do what he asks to avoid a fight.”
The husband’s outdated views on gender roles and the severity of his remarks angered the panelists and viewers. He insisted, “Honestly, I think a woman should do women’s work because she was born a woman. Isn’t it a woman’s job to look after the children and take good care of her husband?”
In particular, when the production team asked him in an interview what he thought about divorce, he replied, “There can’t be a divorce. I need to have my slave,” leaving the studio stunned. TV personality Seo Jang-hoon flew into a rage, asking, “How can anyone say something like that?” When the husband tried to walk back his remarks by saying it was a “joke,” Seo sharply rebuked him: “Don’t give me that ‘joke’ nonsense.”
In an interview with the production team, the wife expressed her distress, saying, “I was dumbfounded, and I was furious because his words demeaned me as a person, lowering me to rock bottom.”
Following the broadcast, online communities and social media have been flooded with criticism of inequality in the division of housework in dual-income households, as well as verbal abuse and gaslighting-like behavior that treats a spouse as a subordinate or slave rather than as an equal. Critics say that a distorted form of patriarchy that has failed to keep up with the times can lead to serious emotional abuse at home.
[email protected] Moon Young-jin Reporter