President Park Geun-hye, who has been stripped of her powers since December due to a corruption scandal, is likely to undergo questioning this week, becoming South Korea’s first incumbent president to do so.
“The face-to-face questioning (of President Park) is considered a necessary step for the investigation to proceed,” Independent Counsel Park Young-soo’s spokesperson said Sunday, confirming its plan to soon question the impeached president in person, without elaborating.
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Lee Kyu-chul, the spokesman for the special prosecutor's team, speaks at the briefing room in Daechi-dong, southern Seoul, on Sunday. Yonhap |
The date and venue for the interview cannot be disclosed yet, the spokesperson Lee Kyu-chul added, as the president’s legal representatives and the probe team are still in talks to finalize the process.
The grilling, largely expected to take place on either Wednesday or Thursday, will make Park the first democratically elected leader to be brought before investigators while in office.
Investigators also hope her questioning will provide the missing pieces in the scandal that led to President Park’s parliamentary impeachment on Dec. 9 and gripped the country for months.
The president is suspected of extorting donations from local businesses to nonprofit foundations controlled by her friend Choi Soon-sil, among others.
The embattled president is likely to strongly defend herself against all allegations.
In an interview late last month, President Park claimed to have done nothing wrong, calling her impeachment charges “preposterous and colossal lies.”
The probe team on Friday attempted to raid the presidential Blue House in connection with the investigation, but was blocked at the gate by officials citing security reasons.
The Blue House claimed that the search warrant was “unconstitutional” as it lists President Park as a criminal suspect. It said the president cannot be charged with a crime as long as she remains in office. By law, a sitting president is immune to criminal liability.
At the briefing Sunday, the investigative team‘s spokesperson told the reporters that they are “considering all options” to search the presidential office, but did not comment on how.
The probe team, under the law, has until the end of February to wrap up its investigation of alleged crimes committed by President Park. A 30-day extension of the investigation is possible with the approval of acting President Hwang Kyo-ahn, who was appointed by Park.
The special counsel team has so far questioned dozens of high-profile government figures and suspects linked to Park’s alleged wrongdoing.
President Park’s now-infamous friend Choi was one of them. The jailed 60-year-old is accused of coercing 53 companies, including Samsung, to donate 77.4 billion won ($66.4 million) to the Mir and K-Sports foundations run by her, using her ties to the president. She is undergoing her own criminal trial on charges of attempted fraud and being an accomplice to abuse of power.
Special prosecutors allege that Park was a major player as well in extorting the corporate money and giving favors in return to the business groups.
Other key allegations surrounding President Park include her role in creating a blacklist of dissident cultural figures and her inaction following the deadly sinking of a South Korean ferry off the southwest coast in 2014, which claimed the lives of more than 300 people, mostly teenagers on a school field trip.
Regarding the so-called blacklist, former Culture Minister Yoo Jin-ryung first disclosed to the public that Park’s administration monitored and cracked down on leftwing artists not favorable to the government.
By Bak Se-hwan (
sh@heraldcorp.com)
