By Park Si-soo



President Park Geun-hye ordered her secretaries to tender resignations, said presidential spokesman Jung Youn-kuk on Friday night, in reaction to a snowballing influence-peddling scandal involving her longtime confidant Choi Soon-sil.



"President Park will carry out a reshuffle of her secretaries in the near future," said the spokesman. He didn't elaborate further.



Meanwhile, it was confirmed that presidential chief of staff Lee Won-jong offered to resign on Wednesday to take responsibility for the scandal that has dealt a devastating blow to her leadership.



"We are ready to do anything to change the current atmosphere and address this challenge when the time comes," Kim Jae-won, senior presidential secretary for political affairs, told a parliamentary session on Friday afternoon. "We (presidential secretaries) deeply regret that we have failed to properly care for the president, and that we have disappointed citizens," he added.



Kim said that the presidential secretarial staff would "actively" cooperate with the ongoing prosecutorial investigation into the case that has plunged Park into the greatest crisis of her political career.



