Extradition of Choi's daughter may drag on
Chung Yoo-ra, the daughter of President Park Geun-hye’s confidant Choi Soon-sil, gets out of a police car after her court hearing in Aalborg, Denmark, Monday. While the court ordered her to be detained there for four weeks, the Korean authorities are trying to get her returned to Korea for questioning over her involvement in the Choi scandal. / AP-Yonhap
By Jung Min-ho
The special prosecution team investigating the Choi Soon-sil scandal is unlikely to be able to get her daughter extradited from Denmark any time soon.
Chung Yoo-ra was detained Sunday (local time) with four other Koreans, including her son, in the northern Danish city of Aalborg on charges of staying in the country illegally.
According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, she attended a hearing the next day at a local court, which ordered her to be kept in custody for four weeks.
This may mean a long battle ahead for the independent counsel team, led by special prosecutor Park Young-soo, which has been trying hard to have Chung return promptly for questioning over her involvement in the wide-ranging corruption scandal.
The most realistic way for them to bring her back is via an extradition request by the Ministry of Justice. Depending on her legal response, the process is expected to take from several weeks to months.
The Danish Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, which handles extradition requests from other countries, said in a statement that it has not received a request yet and asked the Korean ministry to make one.
If she takes the extradition issue to a Danish court, she may be able to stay there for months to avoid questioning here.
The possibility of her voluntary return appears to be slim at the moment. During the hearing, Chung said she would return to Korea voluntarily if she can be questioned without detention, saying there is no one to take care of her 19-month-old son. But the counsel team said there would be no such deal.
The government is now taking steps to revoke her passport. The ambassador to Denmark has already met her there to deliver the foreign affairs ministry’s order to turn in her passport. If she refuses to comply, it will be nullified within a week.
But investigators are concerned that the revocation of her passport may not be enough to have her deported from Denmark immediately.
Lee Kyu-chul, the spokesman for the special prosecutor, urged Chung to return voluntarily, saying the Danish court will not object to the decision.
Chung is suspected of receiving special favors from Ewha Womans University in admissions and grading owing to the influence of her mother, who has already been indicted on charges of exploiting her friendship with President Park Geun-hye to benefit herself and her cronies.
Chung’s cousin Jang Si-ho told investigators that the family even knew Chung was accepted by the school before the official announcement on Oct. 31, 2014. According to Jang, Chung said so during phone conversations before the date. Investigators are now looking into how Chung obtained the confidential information, which was supposed to be known only to a few key figures in the school’s admissions department.
Chung and Choi are also suspected of receiving money from Samsung through Core Sports, later renamed Widec Sports, which they set up in Germany. From September to October 2015, Samsung allegedly sent about 2.8 million euros to the paper company.
Meanwhile, investigators raided the Nambu Detention Center in Seoul and the Seoul Detention Center in Uiwang, Gyeonggi Province, over suspicions that key suspects in the scandal tried to coordinate their stories there.
According to investigators, among the searched places were the cells of former Vice Culture Minister Kim Chong, former presidential secretary Jeong Ho-seong and visual art director Cha Eun-taek _ key suspects detained in the centers for their alleged crimes.
They reportedly used their belongings in the prison, such as papers, to communicate with one another to coordinate what to say and not to say during questioning.