ED 'Godfather' president

President Park Geun-hye appears at the top of what is emerging as an extortion racket to force corporations to cough up billions of won for her confidant, Choi Soon-sil, in her attempt to raise funds for two foundations. The two attracted donations to the tune of 80 billion won ($72 million) virtually overnight.

Park’s supposed main enforcer was Ahn Chong-bum, now former senior presidential secretary for policy coordination. Ahn was called in as a suspect Wednesday and questioned by prosecutors. Although he denied even knowing Choi, he has reportedly changed his stance and argued that he was just an errand runner acting on the President’s order.

At the bottom of this food chain acting as legman is Lee Seung-cheol, vice chairman of the Federation of Korean Industries (FKI), the big business lobby, who also reversed his earlier claim that the fundraising effort had nothing to do with Cheong Wa Dae.

The way this racket worked goes beyond the pale, being reminiscent of the era of dictatorships. As often with a street racket, Ahn picked the weak ones such as Lotte and SK. As it was facing multiple accusations of irregularities amid a family feud over management control, Lotte, which already donated 1.7 billion won to K-Sports Foundation, was asked to chip in 3.5 billion but it doubled its payment.

In May, the foundation returned it to Lotte, when the prosecutors pressed ahead with their investigation. SK, whose vice chairman was in jail, was asked to pay 8 billion won but when the conglomerate offered only 3 billion won, the foundation rejected it. Then, Samsung Group reportedly paid out 7.9 billion won to the pot. Under probe is its additional payment of 3.5 billion won sent to Choi’s firm in Germany, which Samsung said was for the purchase of a horse for Choi’s daughter, who won the gold medal in the Asian Games dressage competition.

CJ, whose chairman was pardoned in August, is suspected of financing much of a 1.4-trillion won theme park project, pushed by a member of the Choi clique, visual art director Cha Eun-taek. According to Chaebul.com, the online specialist in corporate affairs, a total of 554 companies donated to K-Sports and Mir, the other foundation. Twelve of those firms failed to make ends meet last year.

The ongoing investigation should bring to light the whole picture of this corruption scandal. A worrisome likelihood is that Park may have taken the nation back to the era of her father, the army general-turned president for life, who had chaebol under his thumb and used them as his extended personal coffer. Disappointingly, most big firms resorted to behavior befitting the 1970s and 1980s. Would this unsavory deja vu prove that Korea Inc. remains stuck with a bad case of “old habits die hard”? We hope not.