Choi See-joong, chairman of the Korea Communications Commission, tendered his resignation last Friday. His resignation came as criminal allegations were made against his former aide. However, he said at a news conference that he was resigning, not because he or his former aide did anything wrong, but because he was “physically and mentally exhausted.”

But it was too early for Choi to claim innocence, as prosecutors are conducting or preparing to conduct inquiries into two corruption scandals involving his former aide.

Nor was his claimed exhaustion seen to be a convincing reason for his resignation. A few weeks ago, he refused to quit when opposition lawmakers demanded his resignation on a separate issue.

Choi had been pressured to make good on his earlier promise to resign if the charges he pressed four years ago against Chung Yeon-ju, the head of the state-run Korea Broadcasting System, were invalidated. At the time, Choi was suspected of making dubious charges as a means of ousting Chung from the network because the KBS president was a figure close to the previous administration.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s decision that Chung, who was forced out of his post, was not guilty of incurring a loss of 189.2 billion won to KBS by arbitrarily withdrawing from a winnable lawsuit. Following the Supreme Court’s ruling, opposition lawmakers demanded that Choi resign immediately.

One of the corruption scandals involving Jeong Yong-wook, who had served as Choi’s policy assistant until last year, is an allegation that he took 200 million won in bribes from Kim Hak-in, board chairman of the college-level Korea Broadcasting and Art School, who wanted to sit on the board of the state-run Education Broadcasting System. A criminal investigation is under way to determine whether or not Jeong engaged in influence peddling.

The other scandal is an allegation that Jeong distributed envelopes, each containing 5 million won, to members of the parliamentary standing committee deliberating on issues concerning communications in 2009. A news report said Jeong gave the money to the lawmakers after the National Assembly passed a controversial bill, paving the way for the Korea Communications Commission to issue newspaper companies licenses to run general programming cable channels. Under these circumstances, Choi cannot claim innocence yet. Instead, he will have to wait until the criminal investigations are completed.