Former President Chun Doo-hwan's second son was called in for questioning by prosecutors Tuesday over suspicions that he evaded taxes in a land transaction to turn a profit.
It marks the first time that a child of Chun faced questioning since the prosecution office launched a probe team tasked with reclaiming the fortune of the former military dictator who was convicted of taking bribes while in office in the 1980s.
Chun was ordered by the nation's top court in 1997 to return to state coffers around 220 billion won (US$196.8 million) he illegally accumulated through bribery from big businesses during his military rule from 1980 to 1988. Chun, who seized power through a coup, has yet to return some 167.2 billion won to the state.
His second son, Chun Jae-yong, entered the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office in southern Seoul around 7:30 a.m. to face interrogation, prosecutors said.
The prosecution office suspects that the younger Chun evaded the taxes in the transaction in 2006, in which he bought a 460,000-square-meter land in Osan, just south of Seoul, from his now-jailed uncle, Lee Chang-seok, for one-tenth of the officially appraised price.
The land might have also been allegedly purchased with illegal funds from the elder Chun, prosecution officials added.
