A confidant of former South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun has been indicted for his alleged involvement in a bribery scandal, prosecutors said yesterday.
Prosecutors said Jung Sang-moon, presidential secretary for administrative affairs during the Roh presidency between 2003 and last year, was accused of embezzling 1.25 billion won (US$990,000) from the presidential budget.
He was also accused of accepting 400 million won in bribes from an arrested businessman, shoemaker Park Yeon-cha, before the end of Roh’s term early last year.
DENIAL
Roh denied his role in the case on April 30 when prosecutors questioned him about payments by Park worth US$1 million to Roh’s wife and another payment of US$5 million.
Prosecutors said the US$5 million eventually went to Roh’s son, Roh Gun-ho, through one of his relatives. Roh denied this.
Having won office partly on an anti-corruption platform and served from 2003 to last year, Roh has publicly apologized for his family’s involvement in the case but has not admitted personal wrongdoing.
Prosecutors have yet to decide whether to charge the former president.
FORMER LEADERS
Five former presidents including Roh have been tarnished by scandals involving either themselves or their families.
Apart from Roh, Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo personally faced a criminal probe.
Chun and Roh Tae-woo were convicted in 1995 of receiving bribes and inciting mutiny. Both were sentenced to death but pardoned in 1997.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home