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| Rep. Kwak Sang-do leaves the National Assembly after offering to resign his seat, Oct. 2. Yonhap |
Rep. Kwak Sang-do, an independent lawmaker who left the main opposition People Power Party (PPP) a week ago, offered to resign his National Assembly seat Saturday amid mounting suspicions over his son receiving an unreasonably huge sum in severance pay from a firm at the center of a massive land development scandal.
“I can no longer work as a member of the Assembly amid widespread misunderstanding and distrust toward me,” Kwak said in a news conference at the legislative body.
“Everything regarding the nature of my son’s severance pay and whether I was involved in the land development project and the relevant company will be revealed through investigations,” he said, calling for a swift and thorough probe.
Kwak left the PPP last Sunday after media reports revealed that his son received 5 billion won ($4.24 million) as a severance payment after just seven years working at Hwacheon Daeyu Asset Management, the company suspected of illicitly reaping huge gains from the land development project in Seongnam, just south of Seoul, launched in 2015 when Gyeonggi Gov. Lee Jae-myung, currently a presidential front-runner for the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), was the city’s mayor.
Kwak, a prosecutor-turned-politician elected twice to the Assembly from a district in the southeastern city of Daegu, had also served as senior presidential secretary for civil affairs during the presidency of Park Geun-hye.
According to the National Assembly Act, a majority vote is required to approve a lawmaker’s resignation.
Kwak’s resignation offer came one day after a group of 51 lawmakers, mostly from the DPK, submitted a motion to discipline him. A large number of PPP lawmakers have also stepped up pressure on him to resign.
He is also under police investigation after civic activists filed a criminal complaint against him, alleging he was involved in bribery.
In recent days, prosecutors and police have been speeding up their investigations into the Seongnam land development scandal amid allegations that Lee gave business favors to certain developers during his days as the city’s mayor. (Yonhap)
Scandal-tainted lawmaker offers to resign from National Assembly
Source: Buhay Kapa PH
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