Independent lawmaker Kang Yong-seok on Wednesday offered to resign from his parliamentary seat to take responsibility for raising groundless draft-dodging rumors about Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon's son.
The 43-year-old lawmaker last month raised allegations that the mayor's son Park Ju-sin, 27, fabricated his medical records to evade mandatory military service. Kang vowed to leave parliament if his claim turned out to be false.
On Wednesday, the junior Park received another checkup at Yonsei University's Severance Hospital in Seoul to prove his innocence. The hospital announced that the medical results were identical to the record presented to the conscription agency last year.
"I will accept all medical results announced by the hospital. I will step down from my post as I promised," Kang said in a hastily prepared press conference at the National Assembly. "I apologize for making personal attacks or damaging reputations of related people against my will in the process of raising draft-dodging allegations."
Mayor Park plans to file a defamation suit against the first-term lawmaker to hold him accountable for the "sheer fabrication and irresponsible political attacks" against his son, his spokesman Rhyu Kuyng-ki quoted him as saying.
All able-bodied Korean men between the ages of 18 and 35 must serve 24 months in the country's military that confronts North Korea across a heavily fortified border. Evading the draft has long been a hot-button issue here, with political candidates losing elections for not having served or for having their sons exempted.
The junior Park joined the Air Force last August, but was sent home four days later as he suffered pain in his thighs. After a second checkup by the Military Manpower Administration (MMA) in December found him unfit for active duty due to discs in his spine, he has been waiting to perform an alternative service at a public organization.
For the re-examination, Park's son submitted the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) film he had taken at a local hospital to the MMA, which had been cross-checked with his computerized tomography (CT) scan he took at the agency.
"After thoroughly cross-checking today's film against what Park Ju-sin took last December, we reached the conclusion that the two films turned out to be the same person's," Yoon Do-heum, a neurosurgeon at Severance Hospital, said at a press briefing.
Kang, a lawyer-turned-politician, was kicked out of then ruling Grand National Party, now Saenuri Party, in July 2010 after he made lewd remarks about TV anchorwomen and women's appearances in a meeting with college students.
Since Kang maintained his seat after a parliamentary motion to expel him from the parliament was voted down in August last year, the Harvard Law graduate has filed several suits against high-profile figures in the liberal camp, moves critics have called "noise marketing" to raise the disgraced politician's personal profile. (Yonhap)