| Kim Keon-hee, the wife of People Power Party presidential candidate Yoon Suk-yeol, leaves her home in southern Seoul, Dec. 15. Yonhap |
The ruling Democratic Party (DP) on Sunday accused the wife of main opposition presidential candidate Yoon Suk-yeol of falsifying her attendance at New York University in 2006.
Kim Keon-hee, the wife of the People Power Party (PPP) candidate, has been hit with a series of allegations that she falsified her credentials when applying for teaching jobs at two local universities in 2007 and 2013.
According to a task force under the DP presidential campaign committee, Kim wrote on her 2013 resume for Anyang University that she took the "NYU Stern School Entertainment & media Program" in 2006.
On her 2007 resume for Suwon Women's University, she wrote that she took the "New York University Entertainment and Media Business Executive Program" from October to November 2006, the task force said.
"Upon checking NYU's academic programs in 2006, there was no program identical to the one Kim listed on her resume," it said in a press release.
The task force went on to say that the course most similar to the one Kim referred to was an "Entertainment, Media and Technology Program" that students could choose as part of their MBA degree in their second year but not on its own.
Given the timeline of Kim's work experience, it was impossible for her to have taken that program, the task force said.
"There's a high probability that the NYU Stern School program Kim referred to was falsified," Rep. Kim Byung-kee, the task force chief, said.
"If Kim cannot prove the veracity of her program, not only should she apologize for hurting the many young people looking for jobs and the university instructors, but Yoon Suk-yeol should resign as someone who has preached fairness but turned a blind eye to his family's irregularities," the lawmaker said.
The PPP rejected the allegations as untrue.
According to a spokesperson for the PPP campaign, Kim attended a six-month course offered by Seoul National University's Global Leader Association in 2006, which included the program at NYU.
The spokesperson said Kim received a certificate upon completing the program and will disclose it to the public as soon as it can be obtained.
Yoon, who apologized to the public Friday for "causing concern" with the controversy surrounding his wife, suggested Sunday that many of the DP's claims have proven to be false.
"I ask you all to judge those areas carefully," he told reporters after an event in Seoul. (Yonhap)