Similar to previous politically charged cases, the prosecution’s probe into the leaks of Blue House documents and alleged influence-peddling by presidential aides left more questions than answers.
The prosecution, announcing the outcome of its investigation into the scandal that had battered the political community for more than one month, said that key elements of the allegations turned out to be false.
First of all, the allegation that President Park Geun-hye’s former aide met her current Blue House assistants regularly to exert influence in state affairs was made up by a police officer who had been assigned to the presidential office.
The officer also authored the Blue House document which alleged that the former aide, Chung Yoon-hoi, hired a man to follow the president’s brother, Park Ji-man. This too proved to be “fiction” written by the police officer.
The officer, Park Kwan-cheon, is also suspected of handing over some of the Blue House documents to the president’s brother on orders from his supervisor ― former Blue House secretary Cho Eung-cheon. Besides Park and Cho, another police officer was indicted on charges of providing some of the leaked Blue House documents to a newspaper reporter.
So the indictment of the three, with only Park under detention, is all legal action the prosecution has taken regarding the scandal, which raised public suspicion about behind-the-scenes influence-peddling by people who are close to the president to such a degree that it lowered her approval ratings to a record low.
The prosecution’s probe focused on two key aspects of the scandal ― one about how Blue House documents ended up in the hands of the president’s brother and a reporter, and the other about whether or not some people close to the president are pulling strings behind the scenes.
The prosecution’s findings about how the documents slipped out of the Blue House seem plausible, although it has yet to be clarified why Cho and Park prepared reports accusing Chung of misconduct and passed them to the president’s brother.
But there are many more questions that needed to be answered. Most of all, the prosecution’s investigation failed to look into allegations that Park’s longtime aides have been exerting influence in government affairs, especially appointments of senior posts at the government and public corporations.
In one such case, a former culture minister said in a newspaper interview that one of Park’s close assistants was exerting undue influence in appointments of senior officials in conjunction with a culture vice minister who is his fellow college alumnus. The ex-minister even suggested dubious ties between Chung and one of Park’s closest Blue House aides.
Things like these ― in fact, we have seen many such cases in the past administrations ― deepen public suspicion that members of Park’s inner circle exercise unwarranted power. Now that the prosecution’s probe is over, Park should start her own work to dispel the lingering suspicion.
