Former presidential secretary under police probe: sources

A former senior presidential secretary for education has been under a police probe on suspicion of running an illegal educational course when he worked as a university chief, police and education sources said Monday.

Song Kwang-yong offered to resign on Saturday, three months after he assumed the post, which President Park Geun-hye immediately accepted. His abrupt resignation has raised speculation about his possible wrongdoings.

Neither Song nor the president gave a reason for the resignation, spawning speculation that he may have been pressed to quit by the presidential office as his alleged involvement in corruption as the head of the Seoul National University of Education was belatedly known.

According to the sources, Song is one of the former and incumbent heads of 17 national and private universities being probed by the Seoul Seocho Police Station in connection with the universities' suspected violation of the High Education Act.

Those universities, including the Seoul National University of Education, ran a program under which students were allowed to attend foreign universities for a certain period while in school, without permission from the government, according to the police.

Some universities drew complaints from students and their parents for demanding two much commission for enrolling in such programs, they said.

"Universities should get permission from the education minister in order to run such a program in cooperation with foreign universities, but they didn't, breaching the High Education Act," a police source said.

Police, however, said the case is irrelevant to his possible personal corruption.

"The probe has all 17 universities as its target, and we found no particular thing that holds him ethically responsible," the source said. (Yonhap)