Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon was accused of wrongfully interfering in personnel decisions at the University of Seoul, a public university funded and supported by the Seoul Metropolitan Government, in a parliamentary audit session Tuesday.
Rep. Lee Noh-guen of the ruling Saenuri Party said he discovered that about half of the visiting professors at the university hired over the past five years are former high-ranking public officials of the municipal government of Seoul.
The lawmaker also found that some of these professors, under one-year contracts, receive about 5 million won ($4,700) in monthly salary without giving any lectures to students.
“Among 11 visiting scholars currently employed by the university, seven of them are former officials of the Seoul government. And all of these seven former officials were hired in the past two years (under Mayor Park’s leadership),” lawmaker Lee said, accusing Park of abusing his power in doing favors for his closest aides.
“He needs to fix this problem if he doesn’t want people to think that he is using the university for his own political benefit.”
Among the former SMG officials employed at the public university are Ki Dong-min, former vice mayor for political affairs at the city government, and Kwon Oh-jung, former senior advisor for political affairs.
The two, considered to be close aides of Mayor Park, suddenly withdrew from their positions at the university on the same day, Oct. 6, roughly a week before the preliminary audit of the SMG.
Kwon had stepped down from his position at SMG earlier this year to support Park’s second mayoral election campaign from May to June.
In response to Lee’s accusations, SMG said the mayor has no power over the university’s personnel decisions. “The university specializes in urban studies and science,” SMG said in a statement. “To strengthen its specialty, the university has been hiring former city officials as researchers since 2006. It all began under the leadership of former Mayor and President Lee Myung-bak.”
