Busan mayoral candidate under probe for staged attack also withdrew from school over falsified records

Jeong I-han, 38, the former Reform Party candidate for Busan mayor, is under police investigation on suspicion of staging a beverage-cup attack against himself. He previously transferred to a Busan high school but withdrew after falsified entries were discovered in his academic record. The foundation that owned the school was chaired by Jeong's father.

According to the Chosun Ilbo, Jeong transferred in June 2006 from David H. Hickman High School in Missouri to a third-year class at a Busan high school, identified only as School A, apparently to obtain a domestic high school diploma.

The falsification was discovered and Jeong withdrew. The homeroom teacher who falsified his records was indicted and convicted on related charges.

Court documents show that the teacher, identified by the surname Kang, entered Jeong as fully present in the school's computer system even though Jeong had not attended. At the time, Jeong had already left the country to enroll in a pre-medicine program at Wake Forest University in the United States.

The Busan District Court sentenced Kang to six months in prison, suspended, on charges of falsifying electronic public records.

The court said Kang "entered false information into the computer system so that Jeong could hold a domestic high school graduation record."

Despite the conviction, Kang later served as vice principal at School A. The chairman of the foundation that owned the school was Jeong's father.

Jeong's father, 66, is an ophthalmologist by training and one of Busan's wealthiest individuals. He founded a general hospital and a long-term care hospital, then acquired a construction company and built it into a corporate group.

The elder Jeong also harbored political ambitions of his own, running for office multiple times without success.

He sought nominations from the Hannara Party and the Saenuri Party — predecessors of the People Power Party — but was turned down each time. He ran as an independent in the 2012 and 2020 general elections, losing both. In 2018, he served as co-chair of the campaign committee for Oh Geo-don, the Democratic Party of Korea's Busan mayoral candidate.

The pattern has fueled speculation in political circles that Jeong I-han, like his father, pivoted from medicine to politics. Jeong worked as a Grade 5 secretary in a People Power Party lawmaker's office in Busan and as a Grade 5 official in the prime minister's civil affairs secretariat, and later served as a Reform Party spokesperson.

Jeong dropped out of the pre-medicine program at an American university and later graduated with a business degree from a Seoul university. His wife and younger sister are both physicians.

Ahead of the June 3 Busan mayoral election, a poll conducted by one survey firm showed Jeong with 2.6 percent support — but the firm turned out to be a subsidiary of the corporate group owned by his father.

Meanwhile, police are investigating the beverage-cup incident with growing suspicion that it was staged.

Jeong said that on April 27, while campaigning near the Guseo interchange in Geumjeong-gu, Busan, a disposable cup filled with a beverage was thrown from a vehicle and struck him, causing him to fall. He said he was later diagnosed with a concussion.

The man who threw the cup, identified only as B, a man in his 30s, fled the scene immediately after the incident but was arrested the same day near his workplace in Sasang-gu, Busan. Jeong subsequently visited B in detention and filed a petition asking for leniency, saying he did not want B punished.

It later emerged that B was a personal fitness trainer Jeong already knew, and that Jeong had received his concussion diagnosis at a hospital run by his father. Police have since expanded their investigation to include suspicions of a false diagnosis.

Police are also reviewing financial transaction records between Jeong and B as they examine the full circumstances of the incident. Given that the statute of limitations for election-related offenses is six months, investigators plan to wrap up the probe as quickly as possible.

코요태 빽가 “삼성전자 100주, 8만원에 매수”…1년 새 ‘대박’, 수익률이 무려

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