Hearing on Hanvit loan yields little

Twenty witnesses and four additional references were called before the National Assembly select committee investigating a Havit Bank loan scandal Monday, but the hearing, where former Culture-Tourism Minister Park Jie-Won and Korea Credit Guarantee Fund branch manager Lee Un-Young testified, brought out little on suspected influence peddling.

Lee said that in February 1999 he received two telephone calls from Park, the then presidential spokesman, requesting him to endorse a 1.5 billion won loan to Arch World, but Lee refused the demand on the ground that he was not in a position to handle a deal of more than 500 million won. Having thus offended the person in power, he insisted, he was pressured to resign, faced police inquiry and made to suffer other harassment.

Park denied making telephone calls to Lee. He brushed aside as groundless charges that he received hundreds of millions of won or monthly payola of 10 million won from the Arch World president.

Asked by Grand National Party (GN) Rep. Won Hee-Ryong if he had intervened in Shina Electric Co.'s bidding for a Defense Ministry contract last February at the request of the Arch World CEO Park Hye-Ryong, the ex-minister said he had his secretary inquire about the deal after an uncle of Park Hye-Ryong asked him for some information on it.

In a related development, Rep. Eom Ho-Sung of the GNP raised doubts about the alleged falsification of school records when former Minister Park entered Dankook University in 1965. Democratic members of the parliamentary panel asked Lee if he had not been offered sexual favors from the firms having to do with the guarantee fund. A war of words developed among the assemblymen of the opposing parties over irrelevant matters regarding the private lives of some witnesses.

Kim Jung-Hoon jnghn@donga.com