The woman at the centre of a South Korean political scandal begged forgiveness yesterday as she arrived to meet prosecutors investigating allegations that she used her friendship with President Park Geun-hye to influence state affairs and gain benefits.
Choi Soon-sil pushed her way through a scrum of journalists and protesters demanding her arrest and Park’s resignation, losing a shoe in the melee, to enter the prosecution building in Seoul.
Televised footage of her arrival at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office showed a distraught-looking Choi – dressed head to toe in black with her face covered with a hat and scarf – as she stepped out of a black sedan to face hundreds of reporters.
Choi did not say a word as she sobbed and shoved her way, losing a shoe in the process, into the building past reporters and protesters with placards that read “Arrest Choi Soon-sil! Impeach Park Geun-hye!”
“Please forgive me. I committed a crime I deserve to die for,” Choi was quoted as saying by Yonhap news agency after stepping inside the building, using a Korean expression to convey deep remorse.
“We hope that the various allegations can be thoroughly verified,” presidential spokesman Jung Youn-kuk told reporters.
Choi returned to South Korea early on Sunday from Germany, where she had been staying, and was ready to answer prosecutors’ questions, her lawyer said earlier.
She had been under intense pressure to return as the political crisis engulfed Park over allegations that she allowed Choi to use her friendship to exert improper influence and reap benefits.
Thousands of South Koreans rallied on Saturday seeking Park’s resignation over the scandal.
They said that Park betrayed public trust and mismanaged the government, and had lost a mandate to lead.
Opposition parties have demanded a thorough investigation but have not raised the possibility of impeaching the president.
Park is in the fourth year of a five-year term and the crisis threatens to complicate policymaking during the lame-duck period that typically sets in toward the end of South Korea’s single-term presidency.
In response to the scandal, eight of Park’s aides including her chief of staff and three advisers who tightly controlled access to her, have stepped down, her office said on Sunday.
Choi’s lawyer, asked if she was admitting guilt by asking for forgiveness, said she was just expressing her feelings, not stating a legal position.
“It wouldn’t be right to take it as any kind of legal statement,” the lawyer, Lee Kyung-jae, told reporters outside the prosecutors’ office.
Park apologised last week for giving her friend access to draft speeches during the first months of her presidency but it did little to deflect demands that the president reveal the full nature of her ties with Choi and whether she enjoyed favours because of her friendship with the president.
Park, the daughter of a former president, Park Chung-hee, said she had consulted Choi with good intentions and Choi was someone “who gave me help when I was going through a difficult time”.
Choi, in her first comments after weeks of reports about her ties with Park, told a newspaper last week that she did get drafts of Park’s speeches after Park’s election victory but denied she had access to other official material, or that she influenced state affairs or benefited financially.
Choi is the daughter of a late shadowy religious leader and one-time Park mentor called Choi Tae-min, who was married six times, had multiple pseudonyms and set up his own cult-like group known as the Church of Eternal Life.
Choi Tae-min befriended a traumatised Park after the 1974 assassination of her mother, whom he said had appeared to him in a dream, asking him to help her daughter.
He became a long-time mentor to Park, who subsequently formed a close bond with Choi Soon-sil that endured after Choi Tae-min’s death in 1994.
Choi Soon-sil’s ex-husband served as a top aide to Park until her presidential election victory in 2012.
Choi’s lawyer said she was in poor health and may be suffering from a heart condition, which he would discuss with prosecutors.
An unidentified man was taken into custody after dumping a container of what appeared to be animal dung at the door of the prosecutors’ office after Choi went in, demanding that prosecutors undertake a proper investigation.
Analysts say the scandal could paralyse Park’s administration, underlining her lame-duck status before presidential elections in December next year.
And all this at a time of slowing economic growth, rising unemployment and elevated military tensions with North Korea.
In his briefing yesterday, presidential spokesman Jung stressed that the ongoing political uncertainty would not be allowed to open even the “slightest crack” in the country’s defence readiness.