Rep. Park Jin retains job

By Park Si-soo

Rep. Park Jin of the ruling Grand National Party (GNP) will retain his parliamentary seat thanks to a mitigated punishment on bribery charges.

The Seoul High Court hit Thursday the three-term lawmaker with a fine of 800,000 won on charges of taking illegal political funds from a businessman, Park Yeon-cha, overturning a district court’s ruling of a 3 million won penalty.

A lawmaker loses his or her elected representative status when sentenced to a fine of 1 million won or more, according to the Election Law.

“The testimonies of the businessman were inconsistent so we could not fully trust him,” said presiding Judge Kim Sang-chul.

The 54-year-old Harvard University graduate was indicted last year for receiving $20,000 in cash from Park, former chairman of a Busan-based shoemaker Taekwang, in Vietnam in March 2008. Another charge he faced was accepting illegal political donations worth 10 million won from the tycoon, who was well-known as a close supporter of the late President Roh Moo-hyun.

Park, a close aide to President Lee Myung-bak, pushed to give a parliamentary endorsement to the dragging Korean-U.S. free trade agreement when he chaired the National Assembly Foreign Affairs and Trade Committee. But the endorsement has yet to be made.

He tapped into politics in 1993 as a translator for then-President Kim Young-sam.