Park's aide offers to quit over election intervention

Lim Jong-hoon

By Kim Tae-gyu

Lim Jong-hoon, a presidential secretary for civil affairs, has offered to resign amid allegations that he intervened in the governing Saenuri Party’s nomination of candidates for the June 4 local elections, a spokesman for Cheong Wa Dae said Sunday.

The main opposition Democratic Party (DP) raised allegations last week that Lim interviewed 15 applicants to be Saenuri Party candidates in the lower-level municipal and provincial council elections in Suwon and Gyeonggi Province.

As public officials are banned from intervening in elections, the opposition claims there was evidence that the presidential office unlawfully attempted to meddle in the forthcoming polls.

“Lim offered to resign and Cheong Wa Dae started an investigation,” said presidential spokesman Min Kyung-wook. “Cheong Wa Dae plans to accept his resignation and the procedure is expected to be completed early this week. Presidential chief of staff Kim Ki-choon is in charge of making the decision.”

Lim denies involvement in the screening process in Suwon where he ran for election to the National Assembly in 2012. After losing, he started working as a secretary for President Park Geun-hye early last year.

“I am not the regional head of the Saenuri Party. Hence, I do not have any authority over the selection of party candidates. And you know, the Saenuri Party is set to select its candidates through primaries, which means I cannot intervene,” Lim said.

“But experience has taught me that losers in primaries become greatly hurt. Accordingly, I advised some of them to arrange the candidacies among themselves. That’s it.”

Late last month, Lim climbed a mountain with the 15 applicants vying for a party nomination.

His resignation is expected to be a burden to President Park because she called on civil servants to remain neutral regarding the local elections.

On a March 4 Cabinet meeting, President Park stressed the importance of government officials maintaining neutrality, saying: “There have been many illegal, unfair cases in which civil servants have damaged the neutrality of elections whenever local polls were held. It should be different this time.”

Lim’s unexpected departure is the latest in a series of personnel management mishaps for the Park administration in which many senior officials or candidates for those jobs left in disgrace because of ethical lapses, incompetence or involvement in previous illegal activities.

Last month, President Park fired Oceans and Fisheries Minister Yoon Jin-sook for a series of gaffes made after an oil spill in waters off the southwestern coastal city of Yeosu.

After her inauguration on February 2013, she struggled to complete her Cabinet, taking almost two months to do so because many of her candidates resigned or failed to win parliamentary approval. The last Cabinet member she appointed was former Minister Yoon, a move that prompted strong opposition from the DP.

Park’s first spokesman Yoon Chang-jung was dismissed last May after he allegedly groped an embassy intern during her first overseas trip to the United States as chief executive.