Park’s aide returns to face the music
Print Edition
THE woman at the centre of a deepening political crisis around South Korean President Park Geun-hye would cooperate with prosecutors investigating allegations that she had improper control over state affairs, her lawyer said yesterday.
Choi Soon-sil, who holds no post in government, returned to South Korea early yesterday from Germany, where she had been staying.
She was under intense pressure to return to South Korea as the political crisis engulfed Park over allegations that the president had allowed Choi to use her friendship to exert improper influence and benefit personally.
In the midst of the political crisis, Park accepted the resignations of five top presidential aides, including the chief of staff, the presidential office said yesterday.
Three long-time Park aides, the insular core of advisors who have been criticized of tightly controlling the access to the president, have also stepped down, according to the presidential office.
Park’s office said last Friday she had ordered her senior secretaries to tender their resignations.
“Choi has expressed through her attorney that she will actively respond to prosecutors’ investigation and will testify according to the facts,” her lawyer Lee Kyung-jae said. “She is deeply remorseful that she had caused frustration and despondency among the public.”
Choi left Europe on a flight from London to avoid media camped out in Germany, Lee added. She would make herself available for questioning by prosecutors, the lawyer said.
Thousands of South Koreans rallied in Seoul on Saturday night demanding Park’s resignation over the scandal. Angry Koreans say Park betrayed public trust and mismanaged the government, and has lost a mandate to lead the country.
The protest came as prosecutors investigate presidential aides and other officials to determine whether they broke the law to allow Choi to wield undue influence or gain financially.
Park said last week she had given Choi access to speech drafts early in her term and apologized for causing the public concern.
In an interview with South Korea’s “Segye Ilbo” newspaper published last Thursday, Choi said she had received drafts of Park’s speeches after the president’s election victory but denied she had access to other official material, or that she influenced state affairs or benefited financially.
Choi was someone “who gave me help when I was going through a difficult time,” Park said in a televised address last Tuesday.
Park is in the fourth year of a five-year term, and the crisis threatens to complicate policy making during the lame-duck period that typically sets in toward the end of South Korea’s single-term presidency.
Opposition parties have demanded a thorough investigation. The crisis has sent Park’s public support to an all-time low.
Choi was seen in photographs with Park from 1979 when Park, as the eldest daughter of then-President Park Chung-hee, was filling in as first lady for her mother who had been killed five years earlier by an assassin intending to kill her father.
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