Presidential office considering post to manage first lady's affairs

The presidential office said Friday that it is mulling the establishment of an office tasked with managing the affairs of first lady Kim Keon-hee amid continuing allegations regarding her involvement in a stock manipulation scheme.

First lady Kim Keon Hee, left, and President Yoon Suk Yeol greet officials and reporters before boarding a flight to New York on Sept. 18, 2023. [YONHAP]

The presidential office said Friday that it is mulling the establishment of an office tasked with managing the affairs of first lady Kim Keon-hee amid continuing allegations regarding her involvement in a stock manipulation scheme.

Earlier in the day, President Yoon Suk Yeol vetoed two special counsel probe bills pushed by the liberal Democratic Party (DP), one of which focuses on allegations against the first lady, by approving a Cabinet motion that called on the National Assembly to reconsider the bills.

In a closed-door press briefing on Friday, a high-ranking presidential official who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity said that an office to handle the first lady’s business could be set up “if public opinion approved its establishment.”

The official also denied any link between the special counsel probe being pushed by the DP and the office under review, saying that Yoon had promised during his election campaign not to set up a dedicated department for the first lady.

The presidential office has argued the proposed special probe into the allegations against Kim is politically motivated, noting that the case already underwent intense scrutiny for two years during the previous Moon Jae-in administration, and that bipartisan support is needed for the probe to carry legitimacy.

Kim has been accused of involvement in a scheme to manipulate the stock prices of Deutsch Motors Inc., a BMW car dealer in South Korea, between 2009 and 2012.

The former head of Deutsch Motors, Kwon Oh-soo, was convicted and given a suspended prison term last February on charges of manipulating the company’s stock prices and conspiring with market players in violation of the Capital Markets Act.

The DP has accused Kim of being one of the market players in its push for a special counsel to probe the allegation, which she denies.

The first lady and her family have been dogged by other accusations of criminal and ethical wrongdoing since before her husband won the presidency in 2022.

Kim was forced to offer a public apology in December 2021 after she was accused of falsifying career credentials in résumés she submitted for past teaching posts.

In August 2022, Kim also faced accusations that she committed plagiarism while writing her doctoral thesis and three other academic papers at Kookmin University, Seoul, where she earned a Ph.D in design in 2008.

Although an investigative committee at the university cleared Kim of plagiarism after a months-long probe into her academic papers, the school also said it was impossible to verify whether Kim had committed academic misconduct in the remaining paper, leading to widespread confusion over its findings as well as further suspicion that the university had come under political pressure to clear the first lady of wrongdoing.

Kim’s mother, identified in court documents only by her surname Choi, was sentenced to one year in prison in December 2021 for forging a financial document used in a past deal for a land purchase.

The district court in Uijeongbu, Gyeonggi, found Choi guilty of producing a fake bank account balance certificate and using it to purchase a swath of land in Seongnam, south of Seoul, from April 2013 to October of that year.

The forged document suggested she had deposited 34.7 billion won ($29.2 million) into the account.

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]