It’s not unusual for the children of Korean presidents to be subject to investigation by prosecutors or even face criminal penalties. Yet Lee Si-hyung, the current first son, set another disgraceful record Thursday by becoming the first among presidential offspring to undergo a probe by “special” prosecutors. It’s too bad for the junior Lee, not least because the 34-year-old seems to have not done much apart from lending his name to his father.
Lee reportedly denied violating the law that calls for making all property deals using real names, saying he bought the land in a hot Gangnam (southern Seoul) district and to actually own it for a year or so, and scraped up $1.1 million for the purchase by borrowing from relatives, according to an unconfirmed story by state-funded Yonhap News Agency.
In many other reports, however, the son said he was neither involved in most of the process nor even knew exactly what was going on. He just took $550,000 in hard cash from his uncle and kept it locked in a Cheong Wa Dae cabinet, as told to do by his father, President Lee Myung-bak.
We believe the latter story to be true. And the junior Lee might be right when he allegedly told prosecutors he didn’t know the Presidential Security Service had shouldered more than its fair share of the joint purchase to save him up to $720,000 of the market price. All this shows that President Lee was deeply involved in the “Naegokdong-gate” scandal surrounding his now-scrapped retirement home, starting from the selection of the site to the raising of the money.
If the independent counsel proves the whole deal was made by registering the land under a third party name, which Korean law currently prohibits, the entire first family could face legal discipline for borrowing and lending name and helping in the process, as first lady Kim Yoon-ok lent the other $550,000 to her son. This is why all eyes are on who are also on the investigators’ summoning list. The President’s eldest brother is almost certain to stand in front of the counsel, but who’s next: the first lady or even the President himself?
Most Koreans will find it hard to understand why the first couple, multimillionaires despite their donation of personal property, could have made such an egregious deal for less than $1-million profit ― if the widespread popular suspicions are right. The most plausible, if lamentable, answer is they, like most other wealthy people here, tried to produce gains through the most common asset-swelling technique of real estate development. If even the presidential family is proverbial case of “the haves don’t know satisfaction,” people will feel more bitter than disappointed.
It is not certain in what direction the investigation will move or how far the special prosecutors are willing to go.
What is certain is that there should be no sanctuary, including the presidential mansion, in criminal probes. It would be difficult for the special prosecutors to target the senior Lee, because a sitting President is immune from criminal prosecution in most cases. The only way to unseat an incumbent chief executive in a case such as this one is through parliamentary impeachment.
That would be a worst-case scenario that not many Koreans would want to see. But people need to know exactly what happened, which is why the special prosecutors’ mission is crucial. There are at least two reasons why they must get to the bottom of the matter. First, it is long past time to stop this recurrence of deja vu every five years in order to improve the nation’s reputation. Second, it should serve as an occasion to overhaul the politicized prosecution, which has given up as a law-enforcement organization through wishy-washy probes in the first place.
For the same reasons, it should be the three major presidential candidates that must follow the investigation’s development most intently.