Denmark is awaiting a formal request from Seoul to extradite the daughter of Choi Soon-sil, the woman at the centre of the huge corruption scandal that has led to the impeachment of South Korea’s president, Park Geun-hye, authorities have said.

Chung Yoo-ra was arrested early on Monday in the northern Danish city of Aalborg after South Korean police requested Interpol’s help when she failed to return home for questioning about her alleged ties to the scandal.

The 20-year-old, a former member of the national equestrian team, was with three other adults and a child when she was detained on charges of being in Denmark illegally, police and prosecutors said, and would be detained “until the issue of extradition is decided upon”.

Park was impeached last month by the South Korean parliament amid public fury over investigators’ claims that she conspired to allow Choi, her longstanding confidante, to extort companies and meddle in state affairs, including appointments of top officials.



The scandal, which has left Park fighting for her political life four years after she became South Korea’s first female president, has drawn hundreds of thousands of protesters on to the streets of Seoul for weekly demonstrations.

Chung, who trained in dressage in Germany and won a gold medal at the 2014 Asian Games, is suspected of taking advantage of her mother’s four-decade-long relationship with Park to win special treatment from Seoul’s prestigious Ewha Womans University, which admitted her at the expense of other candidates with better qualifications.

Wanted in South Korea for alleged criminal interference in connection with her academic record as well as other unspecified charges, Chung’s emergency extradition was now being sought, Lee Chul-sung, head of the Korea National Police Agency, told a media conference in Seoul.

The foreign ministry in Seoul had been working to cancel Chung’s passport for some time, Lee said, adding that Danish police had 24 hours to secure evidence she was staying illegally in Denmark. The two countries have an extradition treaty.

The corruption scandal centres on accusations that Park and Choi granted favours to South Korean companies in exchange for their “donating” nearly $70m to non-profit foundations controlled by Choi, who has become known as South Korea’s “female Rasputin” for the influence she allegedly wielded.

One particular focus of the investigation is the claim that the electronics giant Samsung sought favours from Choi and Park – such as the support of the state pension service in a major shareholder vote last year – in return for funding some of their initiatives.



Also part of the inquiry is Samsung’s involvement in Chung’s riding career, which the firm is alleged to have bankrolled in order to curry favour. Korea’s JTBC television, which said one of its journalists tipped Danish police off to Chung’s presence in the country, reported that Chung told officials she was in Denmark “for equestrian-related work”.

Danish police are currently holding five people in custody, including Chung, two men in their late 20s, a woman in her 60s and a child born in 2015, police sources told Reuters. Chung is known to have a young son.

Lee Kyung-jae, a lawyer representing Choi and Chung, said the daughter would cooperate. “When Chung Yoo-ra returns, I will ensure that she fully cooperates with the special prosecution’s investigation,” he told the Yonhap News Agency.

Chung’s arrest came a day after Park, whose father ruled the country for 18 years after seizing power in a 1961 coup, broke a month-long silence over her alleged role in the influence-peddling scandal, denying all wrongdoing and rejecting the accusations against her as “a fabrication and a falsehood”.

Park, 64, said she had been “completely framed”, without going into further detail. The embattled president, whose impeachment must be confirmed or overruled by the constitutional court by June, has apologised for “carelessness” in her relations with Choi.

The confidante, the daughter of a controversial religious figure who was close to Park until his death in 1994, is awaiting trial on charges including coercion and abuse of power. She has denied all wrongdoing.

Park’s last public appearance had been on 29 November, when she offered to step down if parliament could agree on a way for her to leave office. Opposition parties, joined by some members of Park’s Saenuri party, led a motion for her impeachment on 9 December.

Park, whose executive powers have been handed to an acting president, prime minister Hwang Kyo-Ahn, will become South Korea’s first democratically elected leader to be forced out of office early if at least six of the constitutional court’s nine justices support her impeachment, with a presidential election held within 60 days.

But if at least six judges are opposed, her presidential powers will be restored and she could limp on until the end of her term in February 2018.