By Lee Tae-hoon
Independent lawmaker Kang Yong-seok said Tuesday that he is mulling filing a criminal suit against Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon’s son for allegedly dodging mandatory military service with fabricated medical records.
Rep. Kang said he planned to file the case in the afternoon, but temporarily withdrew it until the Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) decides whether to look into the matter as the latter cannot launch a probe once prosecutors start to handle the same matter.
The legislator sought an investigation of BAI early this month into the draft dodging allegation involving Mayor Park’s 27-year-old son, Park Ju-sin.
The move came only hours after Mayor Park hinted that he and the Military Manpower Administration (MMA) may simultaneously disclose the disputed medical records of his, to dispel growing suspicions.
Ju-sin was exempted from military duty after a second checkup on Dec. 27, 2011 upon submitting a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan showing a spinal disc herniation.
He joined the Air Force in August last year, but was sent home four days later due to pain in his thigh.
Mayor Park and the MMA claim that the MRI film is Ju-sin’s, whereas Rep. Kang and some medical experts have raised suspicions that it belongs to an overweight person in his 30s or 40s.
“The MMA believes that it was unlikely for the junior Park to get a draft exemption with someone else’s MRI film,” said a spokesman of the military personnel recruitment agency.
He claimed that Ju-sin underwent computerized tomography scanning at the MMA to prove that the MRI image was of him.
Rep. Kang, however, claims that Ju-sin submitted someone else’s MRI obtained from a doctor who had a criminal record for forging medical records for conscripts.
The lawmaker pointed out that not only the authenticity of the MRI scan is questionable, but the doctor, only identified as Kim at Hyemin General Hospital in Seoul, was not authorized to provide such medical records for the MMA.
“The medical record of Ju-sin cannot be used as a legitimate proof for the illness of a conscript as this would be in violation of Article 33 of the MMA’s Conscript Checkup Regulations,” he said.
Rep. Kang has raised suspicions over the draft dodging since early this year. He has made public video clips that show the junior Park bending over or running up stairs, which a person with a spinal disc herniation wouldn’t be able to do.
Mayor Park first said it was not worthy of a response to the controversy, but later decided to disclose his son’s medical records as the issue received greater public attention.
An MMA official said that it will take up to 10 days to provide the medical records for the junior Park, but it has yet to receive any request from Mayor Park for the simultaneous disclosure.