Police have assigned a case alleging the suppression of an investigation into fabricated credentials of the daughter of independent lawmaker Han Dong-hoon to the Metropolitan Investigation Unit of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency.
The unit said on the 23rd that it will question the complainants in the case at 10 a.m. on the 27th.
Civic groups including the Institute for Livelihood Economy and Voice of Seoul filed a complaint on the 14th with the National Office of Investigation and the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency against Han and prosecutors suspected of involvement in suppressing the earlier probe, citing charges of abuse of authority and dereliction of duty.
The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency's Anti-Corruption and Public Crime Investigation Unit received a complaint in May 2022 over allegations that the daughter of Han, then justice minister, had falsified her credentials. The complaint alleged that she had commissioned someone to ghostwrite a paper and had produced an e-book using math problems created by another person, selling it on Amazon to bolster her application to a prestigious U.S. university.
Police closed the case in December of the following year, declining to refer it to prosecutors on grounds including a lack of evidence of wrongdoing.
The complainants alleged that in November 2022, police asked the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office to seek international criminal judicial assistance to obtain overseas evidence related to suspected copyright violations, but that prosecutors blocked the request.
They also said police had declined to refer the case without adequately examining the actual hours of her volunteer work and the circumstances of her awards, and demanded a thorough reinvestigation even at this stage.
Kim Jong-cheol, acting commissioner general of the Korean National Police Agency, told a parliamentary audit of the agency at the National Assembly's Public Administration and Security Committee on the 12th that he "would not rule out the possibility of a full reinvestigation if new facts emerge."