Education Minister Song resigns

Newly appointed Education Minister Song Ja tendered his resignation Wednesday in the wake of a series of controversies involving his acquisition of rights issue stocks from Samsung Electronics Co. and his suspected double citizenship. Having accepted the resignation, President Kim Dae-Jung will soon appoint Song`s replacement. Upon conveying his intention to quit the post through the Chief of the Presidential Staff, Han Gwang-Ok, the short-lived education chief met reporters at the Education Ministry to make public his decision to leave the office. Presidential spokesman Park Joon-Yung said Minister Song failed to meet the expectations of the people in several respects in view of the fact that the Education Minister is supposed to set an example for the entire nation by commanding higher moral ground than other cabinet members. The decision to quit was Song`s alone, and President Kim readily accepted the resignation for the sake of maintaining the high ethical standards of the government. Likely successors to Song include former Rep. Chang Eul-Byung and Cho Kyoo-Hyang, former chief secretary to the President in charge of education and cultural affairs. The outgoing minister came under fire when it was disclosed that he earned 1.6 billion won by transfering a rights issue received from Samsung Electronics on preferential terms while sitting on the company`s board of directors as an outside member. The former Yonsei University professor was also accused of having tampered with immigration laws in the course of changing his U.S. citizenship to Korean when he became president of Yonsei and of plagiarism in publishing a book on the principles of accounting.