Father of golf legend Pak Se-ri receives suspended sentence over document forgery
Former South Korean golfer Pak Se-ri fights back tears during a press conference in Seoul discussing a legal situation involving her father, Pak Joon-chul, June 18, 2024. Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk
The father of the Korean golf legend Pak Se-ri received a suspended jail term Wednesday for an illegal attempt to borrow the name of his daughter's foundation to build an international golf school.
The Daejeon District Court in the central city of Daejeon handed down a 10-month sentence, suspended for two years, on Pak Joon-chul, on a number of charges, including forging a private document.
The senior Pak was convicted of forging a document and a company seal to set up an international golf school under the name of the Seri Pak Hope Foundation, and of acting as the chairman of the foundation while pursuing the project between June 2021 and July 2023, when Pak Se-ri was the person in charge of the foundation as its director.
The daughter took her father's case to police in September 2023, and police referred it to the prosecution for possible indictment early in 2024.
The father claimed that he was trying to work on behalf of his daughter and he had received tacit approval from the foundation to go ahead with the school project.
However, the court ruled that the senior Pak still had no legal right to forge the foundation's seal and there was no ground to assume the foundation would have authorized the project after it belatedly learned of Pak's pursuit.
In June 2024, Pak Se-ri held a tear-filled press conference in which she revealed she had been trying to pay off her father's debt for years and she would no longer help him financially. Pak also said she had not been on speaking terms with her father since the golf school controversy first surfaced.
Pak Se-ri, a World Golf Hall of Famer, is widely considered one of the most influential LPGA golfers in recent memory. Having retired in 2016 with 25 LPGA wins, including five major titles, Pak is credited with inspiring a whole generation of Korean golfers during her trailblazing career, which began with a bang in 1998 with two major victories and the LPGA Rookie of the Year award.