By Kim Rahn
Staff Reporter
The investigation of actress Jang Ja-yeon's suicide due to alleged managerial and sexual abuse made little headway Thursday, after police questioned her manager but secured no concrete testimony from him.
In a seven-page document that Jang left before killing herself, she claimed she was pressured to provide sexual services and other entertainment to media and corporate executives in exchange for raising her exposure.
However, police have not even started to investigate the figures named in the documents. They have yet to figure out how and why she created the document and how it was leaked to media.
After questioning Jang's former manager Yoo Jang-ho, who was keeping the document, police said he did not reveal much.
``He was questioned for 10 hours. He did not answer many questions, saying he couldn't remember,'' officer Lee Myeong-kyun told reporters.
In the meantime, police obtained testimony regarding Jang entertaining the president of an online news provider after questioning several actresses who were close to her. One of them said that Jang and she entertained the head of an Internet journal at a bar in southern Seoul.
The unidentified actress testified that the head of Jang's former agency, Kim, forced them to provide entertainment to the man in the fall of last year. She said he sexually harassed Jang at the bar and later went out with her after the drinking session. Police are expected to summon him soon.
During questioning, Yoo only admitted to showing parts of the document to reporters from two newspapers March 8, a day after Jang's suicide. He previously claimed that he and bereaved family members of the actress burnt the documents together, and did not know how the document was leaked to the media.
Yoo also confessed that he had copies of the document and dumped them in the trash after destroying them. KBS earlier said it had retrieved some partially burnt papers, and Yoo admitted the broadcaster may have picked them out of the garbage.
He testified that Jang wanted to know whether Kim could be legally punished when she made the document, asking him to obtain legal counsel on her behalf.
Yoo said he has no other copies of the document, and denied the allegation that he disclosed them before Jang's death, which drove her to commit suicide.