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SEOUL: South Korean President Lee Myung-bak's top public affairs aide has resigned after being named in a graft investigation, two presidential officials said on Friday, making him the closest political figure to the leader to be implicated in corruption.
Kim Du-woo, a former journalist who was part of Lee's closest circle of aides for the past three and a half years, resigned on Thursday after being summoned for questioning in an influence-peddling case, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“(Kim) has decided to leave after being notified by the prosecutors to appear for questioning,” one of the officials said. “The decision does not mean he is admitting to anything.”
Lee is seen as increasingly powerless as he enters the final 18 months of his single five-year term, due mainly to his perceived inability to tackle rising prices and a widening income gap. Earlier, he won credit for pulling Asia's fourth largest economy out of the 2008-2009 economic downturns faster than its peers.
Were Kim convicted, Lee would join a string of leaders who late in their terms saw figures around them jailed for trying to use their position for personal gain.
Prosecutors have been investigating whether the owners of a savings bank paid off officials including Kim to keep regulators from closing it down for mismanagement. Kim has denied he took money from the bank owners through a lobbyist.
Lee's cousin is also under investigation in a separate fraud case in Suwon, a city south of Seoul, for misleading people to invest in a scheme that he said was tied to the conservative leader's project to clean up the country's major rivers, an official at the prosecutors' office said.
South Korean voters go to the polls next year to elect a new parliament in April and pick a new president in December. Polls show Lee's ruling Grand National Party is likely to lose its parliamentary majority.
A former aide to the president was arrested earlier this year on charges of taking bribes from the same bank.
After years of efforts to clean up South Korea's image as a place where business could not be done without bribes and backroom deals, graft cases are still a regular feature of politicking ahead of elections.
