Former People Power Party lawmaker Yoo Seong-min [Yonhap]
Former People Power Party lawmaker Yoo Seong-min [Yonhap]

Former People Power Party lawmaker Yoo Seong-min said Friday he would prove his innocence in court after police referred a case involving allegations that his daughter received preferential treatment in her appointment as a professor in Incheon National University's trade department.

"The police and the Board of Audit and Inspection are trying by any means to fabricate charges against me," Yoo said in a statement posted on Facebook. "I state clearly that I have never committed obstruction of duties in connection with my daughter's appointment as a full-time faculty member in the trade department at Incheon National University."

He went on to call the investigation politically motivated. "This is nothing but a political investigation and a political audit, driven by a desire to humiliate and suppress me," he said. "I warn the Lee Jae Myung administration: no matter how hard you use the police as a tool of political control to suppress your opponents, you cannot fabricate crimes that do not exist. Political investigations will come back as a boomerang and become their own reckoning."

Yoo also defended the hiring process as "fair and legitimate," saying police and the Board of Audit and Inspection had conducted sweeping investigations of dozens of Incheon National University officials over the past year. "The professors who directly handled the screening and the university itself will have testified truthfully about the fairness of the hiring review," he said.

He added that the Ministry of Education had also been brought in to pressure Korea University into investigating allegations raised by the Democratic Party at last year's parliamentary audit — including self-plagiarism, duplicate publication and paper-splitting in his daughter's research — but Korea University's research ethics committee found no wrongdoing.

The anti-corruption and financial crimes unit of the Incheon Metropolitan Police Agency referred the case to prosecutors Friday, booking Yoo and three others, including the president of Incheon National University, without detention. Investigators said they found insufficient evidence to charge Yoo's daughter, the subject of the original allegations.


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