Prosecutors of an independent counsel Wednesday summoned Choi Soon-sil, who is at the center of a presidential corruption scandal, executing an arrest warrant despite Choi’s consistent refusal to speak. 

Choi, 61, turned up at the counsel’s office in southern Seoul at around 10:30 a.m., keeping mum despite an onslaught of reporters’ questions on her purported interest-seeking in a spate of government projects. 

Choi has been rejecting the counsel’s summons, citing coercion, repeating the team is “no longer democratic” and taking issue with its ways of questioning her last month. 

The latest warrant execution came a day after the grilling of Seoul’s Ambassador to Myanmar Yoo Jae-kyung. Yoo, a former Samsung Electro-Mechanics executive who had no experience in diplomacy or Southeast Asian affairs. He confessed to the team that he was tapped by Choi, who was arranging an official development assistant project of 76 billion won ($65 million) in Myanmar and had taken bribes from some businesses seeking a stake in the initiative, according to counsel spokesperson Lee Kyu-chul. 

Yet Choi is expected to continue to remain silent as she did during the previous round of questioning on Jan. 25 and 26. 

The team requested an arrest warrant after she brushed off six rounds of summons citing reasons ranging from her illness to her unmaterialized attendance at the Constitutional Court to the counsel’s “coercive probe.”
 
By Shin Hyon-hee (heeshin@heraldcorp.com)