Ex-President Chun's memoirs shed new light on Park's ties with Choi family

Published : Mar 30, 2017 - 13:23 Updated : Mar 30, 2017 - 15:37

Ousted President Park Geun-hye's late mentor Choi Tae-min faced military investigation in late 1970s over his alleged misdeeds based on his ties with Park, then a presidential daughter, according to a former leader's memoir obtained Thursday by Yonhap News Agency.

In the soon-to-be-published book, former President Chun Doo-hwan said Choi was confined in a frontline military unit for a "considerable period of time" after her father Park Chung-hee was assassinated in 1979.

Choi is the father of Choi Soon-sil, Park Geun-hye's confidante who was arrested for playing a key role in a corruption scandal that led to the ouster of Park on March 10.

This 2004 file photo shows Park Geun-hye (R), then chief of the main opposition Grand National Party, posing for a photo with former President Chun Doo-hwan during their meeting at Chun's residence in Seoul. (Yonhap)

"After the Oct. 26 incident, (we) have confined Choi Tae-min in a frontline military unit for a considerable period of time," Chun, a general-turned-president, said in the 2,000-page memoirs, referring to the 1979 assassination of then President Park Chung-hee.

Chun seized power through a military coup on Dec. 12, 1979 and ruled the country until 1988.

"(At the time), related agencies already knew in detail the fact that (Choi) had engaged in a series of wrongdoings on the back of (his close ties to) Park (Geun-hye), and this had troubled President Park Chung-hee," he noted, adding the detention was intended to keep him from committing more misdeeds.

The memoirs shed a new light on the decades-long relationship between Park and the Choi family which has drawn keen public attention amid the political scandal that has gripped the country since late October.

The relationship dates back to the 1970s when the late Choi, once a leader of a mysterious religious cult, began advising Park since her mother, Yook Young-soo, was assassinated by a North Korea sympathizer in 1974.

After Choi's death in 1994, his daughter, Soon-sil, is purported to have taken her father's place and advised Park -- a reason why some observers and media portray the relationship between Park and the junior Choi as "shamanistic."

In the memoirs, Chun also claimed that he accepted a constitutional revision in 1987 to enact a direct presidential vote, as he did not want to mobilize military forces during his term to quiet down growing public calls for a democratic presidential election.

Chun, however, has been much criticized for leading a bloody crackdown on a massive pro-democracy movement in May 1980 that resulted in hundreds of deaths. The clampdown was just four months before his inauguration.

In April 1997, the Supreme Court confirmed Chun's sentence of life imprisonment for the crackdown and other charges. But then-President Kim Young-sam also pardoned him in December of the same year under his "grand national harmony" campaign. (Yonhap)