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Prosecutors are about to apply for an arrest warrant for Shin Jeong-ah, the woman at the heart of what started as a bogus degree scandal but reached all the way into the corridors of power. Her apparent lover, the former presidential secretary Byeon Yang-kyun, is still being investigated on suspicion of using his influence to further her career and attempting to hush up the scandal.
Prosecutors arrested Shin at Incheon International Airport on charges of forging private documents and obstruction of official business. Both charges concern Shin¡¯s appointment as an assistant professor at Dongguk University by submitting a forged Yale University doctorate degree and her later appointment as a director of the Gwangju Biennale, Korea¡¯s most prestigious contemporary art show.
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Reporters wait for former art professor Shin Jeong-ah in front of the Seoul Western District Prosecutors' Office in Gongdeok-dong, Seoul, where Shin was being interviewed by prosecutors on Monday.
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Assistant Prosecutor Koo Bon-min of the Seoul Western District Prosecutors' Office said his office is investigating ¡°other charges¡±; apparently that includes embezzlement and fraud. Shin is suspected of using funds she solicited from corporations for the Sungkok Art Museum when she was a curator there for personal purposes such as investing in the stock market. If Shin submitted forged private information including her economic status when she filed for rehabilitation the year before last, it would be fraud.
Proving the charges against Byeon is not easy. Prosecutors will have to secure testimony that Byeon abused his power by pressuring various officials at Dongguk University and on the Gwangju Biennale board. In the case of the suspiciously lavish donations by several corporations to the Sungkok Art Museum and the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development¡¯s support for Dongguk Univeristy, it must be established that those donors felt pressure from Byeon.
Prosecutors are therefore focusing on one specific case, the replacement of a painting in the Ministry of Planning and Budget, where Byeon was vice minister and minister, through Shin. They are also investigating whether Byeon knew that Shin¡¯s Yale doctorate was bogus before her appointment as assistant professor by Dongguk, and whether he helped Shin escape to the U.S. when the scandal broke. Prosecutors apparently intended to prevent Byeon and Shin from coordinating their stories by arresting one and letting the other go.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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