A new book by Shin Jeong-ah, a former art curator and professor, is fueling controversy with its claims that Chung Un-chan, the former prime minister who now heads the Commission on Shared Growth for Large and Small Companies, offered her the art director’s position at Seoul National University’s Museum of Art and that he frequently asked her to meet him late at night in a hotel bar.

Shin - a former art professor at Dongguk University who was convicted of forging her Yale degree and embezzling from a museum in 2007, and who had an affair with former Blue House chief policy maker Byeon Yang-kyoon - ended her self-imposed exile and appeared in public at a book-launching ceremony yesterday.

Shin, who spent 18 months in prison, was released on bail in April 2009.

Shin said that her book’s title “4001’’ refers to her prison number.

The book is a memoir based on a journal Shin wrote over four years after the scandal broke out in 2007.

“I decided to publish the book because I wanted to bid farewell to times I lived as ‘No. 4001’ and wanted to start a new life,” Shin said at the Lotte Hotel in Seoul.

The book is likely to embarras some powerful figures who were involved with Shin.

It gives specific details about how she was hired as a Dongguk University professor with a forged Yale degree, how she met Byeon, as well as detailing questionable conduct by powerful figures, including Chung.

In her book, Shin claims Chung, then SNU president, offered her the art museum job but that she rejected the offer.

Shin also wrote that she sensed Chung had other intentions when he asked her to meet him at a hotel bar.

“When we met at the Palace Hotel [after I rejected the job offer], he said he wanted to meet me on a regular basis and I’m a woman who he wants to love,” Shin wrote.

Chung flatly rejected her claim.

“It is worthless to talk about it,” he was quoted as saying by Yonhap.

“Shin said in her book that every man liked her,” an aide to Chung said. “How can this considered as a fact, given that this is Shin’s unilateral argument?”

When rumors broke in 2007 that Chung offered Shin the SNU position, Chung said he met Shin a few times but never made such an offer.

Chung said the meetings were only to get advice on running an art museum.


By Kim Mi-ju, Kim Seung-hyun [mijukim@joongang.co.kr]