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Hong Kyung-tae, a close aide to former president Roh Moo-hyun and former Cheong Wa Dae general affairs officer, was arrested on Sunday. Hong left the country a day before police issued a travel ban for him on Aug. 23, and returned on Saturday. In charge of managing national properties in his time, he is charged with having pressured the president of the Korea Land Corporation into giving the construction of a Yeongdeok-Osan road to a particular construction company in 2006.
Hong is also suspected of having asked the president of the construction company to subcontract part of the construction of a new Busan Harbor to another firm in 2005. Chung Sang-moon, a former presidential secretary for general affairs, was also investigated by authorities on Aug. 28 over a phone conversation with the Korea Land Corp. president regarding the tender for a road project.
Police presume that the two men's involvement in construction projects was prompted by a request from a man identified as Suh, who was owed money by Jangsucheon, a mineral water firm in which Roh had invested. Suh supplied Jangsucheon with automation facilities in 1997 but the firm failed to pay him W500 million (US$1=W1,121). Instead, he was given a cash receipt by Hong, a junior of Roh's in high school who was running the mineral water company. The receipt also reportedly carried Roh's name as a joint guarantor.
During the Roh administration, Suh would display this receipt to building contractors in efforts to show off his connections with Roh, promising them to help them win tenders for construction projects. Suh frequently met with Hong and Chung at Cheong Wa Dae. He took a total of W910 million from a company which won construction tenders on 11 occasions, including W230 million he allegedly received to deliver to Hong and Chung.
Suh told police that of the money, W500 million was intended to write off the debt Jangsucheon owed him. In fact, Suh reportedly returned the cash deposit receipt to Hong in April 2007. The conclusion must be that Hong and others had put pressure on state-run corporations as a way to write off Jangsucheon's debt.
Was Roh aware of this, given that Jangsucheon's debt was his own? In a special press conference in 2003, Roh talked about how he had taken over Jangsucheon. He said he asked Hong to run the company and stepped down from the management position since he sat on the Tripartite Commission of labor, management and the government and was also mentioned as a candidate for the mayor of Seoul in 1998.
And why did Hong, who entered Cheong Wa Dae in 2004 ? much later than other close aides to Roh -- suddenly leave the presidential office in late 2006 after helping Suh. We must also find out how the money which Suh had received to deliver to the presidential secretaries was spent.
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