Tag: Chung Yoo-ra

I guess when it is winter in Denmark there must not be anything better to do then protest outside a detention center:

On Jan. 13, there were about 20 overseas Koreans, from places such as Copenhagen, London, and Sweden, gathered with locals carrying candles in front of the detention center in Aalborg. Like the weekly Saturday rallies held in Gwanghwamun square in Seoul, they were picketing, saying, “Yoo-ra, let’s go back to South Korea” and “Instead of pizza, eat some [Korean food].”

At the Aalborg detention center one has the luxury to order in pizza. The individual to first propose a candlelight vigil was an overseas Korean residing in Sweden named Lim Ji-hye.

“Compared to Northern Europe,” she said, “our country is still at a stage where we do not have democracy. I think that this is something we must experience as democratic growing pains.”  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

It is looking like whatever evidence Korean prosecutors have against Chung Yoo-ra it must be quite flimsy considering Denmark has suspended the ROK extradition request:

South Korea’s special prosecutors said Saturday that they will send documents requested by Danish authorities concerning the daughter of a woman at the center of a snowballing corruption scandal as soon as possible to speed up her repatriation.

Chung Yoo-ra, the 21-year-old daughter of President Park Geun-hye’s close friend Choi Soon-sil, was arrested in the northern Danish city of Aalborg earlier this year for illegal stay. She is suspected of receiving favors from a college in Seoul during its admissions process and on tests by taking advantage of her mother’s ties to the president.

Chung has been in the custody of Danish authorities and has showed no sign of voluntarily coming back home to face a probe.

South Korea’s special prosecutors looking into the alleged corruption scandal surrounding the president and Choi earlier asked local authorities to extradite Chung.

After weeks of review, the Danish prosecution released a statement on Friday that they suspended the repatriation process and asked South Korea to send extra information before making a final decision.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

I would not be surprised if the extradition procedures against Chung Yoo-ra does drag on considering how little evidence of a crime is at least publicly being offered by Korean prosecutors against her:

The extradition of Chung Yoo-ra, the daughter of Choi Soon-sil, the central figure in a massive scandal which has led to the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye, is expected to take some time.

Chung, 20, was arrested in Denmark’s northern city of Aalborg, Sunday, for staying there illegally. A local Danish court approved a four-week extension of her confinement the following day. Chung appealed, but the higher court denied her appeal.

Chung is reported to have accepted the higher court’s ruling, but is unwilling to return to Korea under any circumstances, according to a Yonhap report, Friday.

Earlier, Chung, who has a 19-month-old son with her, proposed to Korean authorities that she would be willing to go to Korea if she could remain with her son, whether at a welfare center or hospital. The authorities denied her request.

She reportedly changed her stance after seeing with her son at the detention center, Thursday.

Chung is arguing that her son is the main reason for her not to be extradited, as she will be detained when she arrives in Korea and won’t be able to take care of him.

By Jan. 30, Danish authorities will review whether the charges Chung faces justify her extradition to Korea. [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

Here is a good read about how the JTBC journalist track down Chung Yoo-ra in Denmark.  As it turns out it really wasn’t that hard to find her:

This is the inside story of how Chung Yoo-ra was captured in Aalborg, Denmark. An enterprising TV reporter from South Korea drove all night and tracked Chung down in a rented house in northern Denmark.  Inside, he found Chung, her 19-month old baby, 2 horse caretakers, a nanny, 3 dogs and 9 cats.  It was quite an entourage. What’s sad about this story is that Chung and her adult enablers became fugitives because this is the only way they knew how to behave. It may seem improbable and ludicrous for a single mom to be on the run with her toddler, adult hangers-on and 12 furry animals.  However, this is completely rational from the viewpoint of Chung, who never had to face consequences and always got her way while being raised in South Korea.  [All News Korea]

You can read the rest at the link, but not only did she have a large entourage, but she was hiding out in a large rented estate that she was known to keep horses at.  You would think with all the money Choi Soon-sil had that she would have hired someone competent to help her daughter hide out.

This seems a bit overkill to put the guy in a prison jump suit, handcuff him and perp walk him in front of the media for having a teaching assistant take a test for a student:

4 years after he rose to literary stardom for his 1993 fiction “Eternal Empire” which sold over 1 million copies.

The then-27-year-old writer fascinated his readers with the well-investigated historical fiction about the murder of Joseon King Jeongjo (1752-1800), a conspiracy theory that had been passed down for centuries through the descendents of the Noron faction, one of the two dominant political factions of the Joseon era.

Owing to his early success, he was able to become a full-time faculty member at Ewha Womans University when he was 29 years old, even before completing his doctoral degree at Seoul National University’s Department of Korean Studies.

But the reason for Lyou’s recent reemergence into the public eye is something disgraceful. He is under fire for coercing his teaching assistant to take the final exam of his “Understanding Storytelling in Movies” course on behalf of Chung Yoo-ra, the daughter of the trouble-hit Choi Soon-sil. Chung never showed up for his class all semester and didn’t even take the final exam. But she earned a passing grade to maintain her status as a student, stirring suspicions of academic fraud.

Lyou, 51, reportedly threatened his reluctant assistant into helping, saying she would face the consequences if she rejected his call because she would be blacklisted and as a result would never be able to find a job in a university or research institution even after successfully defending her dissertation. He was arrested earlier this week.

Lyou is one of several faculty members at Ewha Womans University who were systematically involved in the plot to help Chung maintain her student status by granting academic favors, despite her substandard academic performance. [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but it appears that anyone even remotely related to the Choi Soon-sil influence peddling scandal can expect to get perp walked in a prison jump suit for the Korean media.

The real question I have which the Korean media so far has no interest in answering is, how prevalent in Korean universities is this special treatment for well connected students?  I find it hard to believe that Chung Yoo-ra was the only person getting special treatment.

This photo, taken on Jan. 3, 2017, shows an equestrian center in the northern Danish city of Aalborg, where Chung Yoo-ra practiced before her arrest two days earlier. Chung, the daughter of Choi Soon-sil who’s at the center of a corruption scandal that has led to South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s impeachment, is suspected of receiving favors from a Seoul college in the admissions process and on tests by leveraging her mother’s ties to the president. (Yonhap)

I am still waiting to see what evidence the ROK authorities have on Chung Yoo-ra to implicate her for corruption at Ewha Women’s University much less the ROK Presidential corruption scandal.  According to this interview she gave she wanted to drop out of the Ewha and her mom would not let her:

Chung Yoo-ra, daughter of Choi Soon-sil, told reporters in Denmark that she has nothing to do with the corruption charges against her and that any controversy involving her was the result of her mother’s scheming.“All I did was sign certain documents, whose contents were covered up by Post-its,” Chung told a group of Korean reporters during a break in a detention hearing at a local court in Aalborg, a northern city of Denmark, on Monday. “I don’t know a thing about what’s been going on in my mother’s business, as it was run by her and her aides.”Chung, 21, is accused of receiving unjust admission to and preferential treatment at Ewha Womans University. She is central to a probe into a corruption scandal involving the Korea Equestrian Federation and Samsung Electronics. Samsung pledged 22 billion won ($18.3 million) for Chung’s equestrian training. It was also the largest benefactor of two nonprofit foundations that Choi practically controlled, contributing 20.4 billion won.

“I thought I was going to be expelled [from Ewha Womans University],” Chung said. “But my mother and I met with then-President Choi Kyung-hee and professor Ryu Chul-kyun. I left the meeting before my mother did and then I found out later that I got the academic credits.

“I even told my mother that I wanted to drop out,” she added, “but it didn’t work out.”

Chung also denied knowledge of how Samsung came to finance her training.

“My mother told me that Samsung decided to sponsor six equestrian athletes,” Chung said. “I was just one of the six who were sponsored.

“I don’t know how much funding I received or from where,” she added. “Only my mother and my training coach would know.”

Chung denied having close ties with President Park Geun-hye.

“The last time I met her was when my father was still working [for Park],” she said. Chung Yoon-hoi, ex-husband to Choi, was chief of staff to Park from 1998 to 2004. “I think I was an elementary school student then.”

She also denied knowledge of what the president may have done during a mysterious seven-hour absence on the day of the Sewol ferry’s sinking in 2014, in which 304 passengers died after a delayed government response.

“I was pregnant at the time, and my mother and I had fallen out because of it,” she said. “I was living in Sillim-dong and my mother in Gangnam District [of southern Seoul], and we had no contact. So I have no knowledge of what might have happened in the government at the time.”

Chung was arrested by authorities in Denmark’s northern city of Aalborg on Sunday on the charge of illegally staying in the country. She was arrested with four other people, including her 19-month-old son.

The court in Aalborg on Monday extended Chung’s detention to Jan. 30, even after she told it, “There is no one to look after my 19-month-old son if I am detained.” Chung’s lawyer in Denmark is reportedly planning to file an appeal. [Joong Ang Ilbo]

It seems like ROK authorities can very easily have Chung return to Korea whenever they want if they allow her to have some kind of home detention with her baby:

Chung said after her arrest that she will not try to avoid extradition to Korea and will cooperate with an independent counsel’s probe of the allegations surrounding her and her mother – as long as she can be investigated without being detained.

Chung told the reporters in Aalborg that she would return to Korea in a heartbeat as long as she can stay with her son.

“It doesn’t matter if the child needs to stay at a nursery [when I’m being investigated], or with a social welfare group, or at a hospital,” she said. “I just miss my baby.”

If Chung returns to Korea, she will be separated from her son after she is arrested.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

The most wanted Korean woman in the world who was on the run in Germany has now been arrested in Denmark:

The daughter of President Park Geun-hye’s close friend, who is at the heart of an influence-peddling scandal that has led to the president’s impeachment, has been arrested in Denmark, police said Monday.

According to the National Police Agency, law enforcement authorities in the European country notified their South Korean counterparts that Chung Yoo-ra was arrested in the northern Danish city of Aalborg on Sunday on charges of illegal stay.

Chung, a former member of the national equestrian team, is suspected of receiving undue favors from Seoul-based Ewha Womans University regarding admission and academic affairs by taking advantage of her mother’s ties to the president.

Special prosecutors looking into the corruption scandal allegedly surrounding President Park and her friend Choi Soon-sil had requested that Interpol put Choi’s daughter on the wanted list after she declined to respond to the investigation team’s repeated summons.

The investigation team said it is collaborating with the relevant bodies to bring Chung to South Korea.

The justice ministry said it has submitted an extradition request to the National Police Agency to swiftly get Chung back home.  [Yonhap]

Interestingly according to the Danish media it was a Korean journalist who tracked down Chung:

The daughter of Choi Soon-Sil, the woman at the centre of a corruption scandal that led to the impeachment of South Korea’s President, has been arrested in Denmark after months in hiding, Seoul prosecutors said on Monday.

I wonder how much of news story the search for Chung Yoo-ra is in Germany?  I scanned through various English language German news sites and could find no articles describing the search for Chung.  It seems as long as the search for Chung does not become a major national news story in Germany she should be able to hide out pretty effectively from the Korean media searching for her:

As Korean prosecutors search for Chung Yoo-ra to question her over how much she benefited from the corruption scandal involving her mother Choi Soon-sil and President Park Geun-hye, it was reported that Chung had abandoned more than 10 pets at her German home before fleeing.

Chung reportedly stayed at a luxury hotel in the southwestern city of Karlsruhe, some 140 kilometers south of Frankfurt, from late November until early December. She did not have her 10 large dogs and a cat with her, according to TV Chosun.

“It appears that she abandoned her pets because carrying them will make her more noticeable to public eyes while on the run,” the report said, after reporters visited the hotel’s most expensive suite that Chung paid 300,000 won ($248) a day for. [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

Via All News Korea, comes something about Chung Yoo-ra the daughter of the woman behind the ROK Presidential scandal, she is a single mother:

Well, Chung’s passport has now been canceled and South Korea’s special prosecutor is requesting that Germany freeze assets belonging to the Choi family.  They are specifically asking that Germany extradite her to South Korea or to arrest and deport her, as her passport is no longer valid.  However, it is not known  where exactly Chung is, although it is suspected she is with the baby she gave birth to in 2015 (the father of the child, who has since broken up with Chung, has returned to South Korea and was interviewed by authorities).  Indeed, the special prosecution asked that Chung attend a parliamentary hearing last week.  She was nowhere to be found and even Choi’s lawyer , Lee Kyung-Jae, didn’t know where she was:  “I don’t know when she will return. She has the freedom to make a choice [whether to attend the hearing or not].”  By virtue of her no show, she is now accused of another serious charge, obstruction of justice.  [All News Korea]

You can read more at the link.