A senior aide to South Korean President Lee Myung-bak offered to resign on Friday amid allegations of involvement in a bribery scandal which has rocked the ruling party in an election year.
The offer by South Korean Senior Political Affairs Secretary Kim Hyo-Jae came one day after National Assembly Speaker Park Hee-tae stepped down over the affair, which is being investigated by prosecutors.
Park or his aides are alleged to have offered envelopes filled with cash to lawmakers of the conservative Grand National Party before a vote — which Park won — to select a new party chief in 2008.
Park, who quit the party post before becoming speaker in 2010, took responsibility for the affair, but did not admit personal wrongdoing.
Kim was an aide to Park at the time.
“I am sorry for causing concern to the public ... I will take all of my political responsibility,” a presidential spokesman quoted Kim as saying, according to Yonhap news agency.
Lee is widely expected to accept the resignation after his scheduled return yesterday from a trip to the Middle East, Yonhap said.
Since the affair was publicized early last month by a whistle-blowing legislator, Kim has denied any involvement in the alleged bribery.
The lawmaker said he received an envelope stuffed with 3 million won (US$2,685) from an aide to the speaker, which he returned.
The disclosure dealt a blow to the conservatives, already suffering from waning support.
The party holds 166 of the 299 parliamentary seats along with the presidency, but anticipates a struggle in the April general election and the presidential poll in December.
Recent surveys show the main opposition Democratic United Party is more popular than the ruling party amid growing discontent over social and economic inequality and an economic slowdown.
In a bid to shed their image as the party of the rich, the embattled conservatives have shifted policies leftward to focus on welfare for the poor.
The Grand National Party also changed its name to the Saenuri Party — a common rebranding tactic in South Korean politics. The party said on Thursday that its name in English would be the New Frontier Party.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
RSS