Prosecutors will question National Assembly Speaker Park Hee-tae on Sunday over his suspected bribery of fellow lawmakers before winning the ruling party's top position in 2008, officials said Friday.

Prosecutors plan to visit Park's official residence in Hannam-dong in central Seoul at 10:00 a.m. on Sunday and question him there.

"We decided to interrogate him in the official parliamentary speaker's residence to show respect for the incumbent National Assembly speaker," a prosecution official said.

Park submitted a letter of resignation earlier this week and is awaiting approval by the National Assembly.

The planned questioning comes almost seven weeks after prosecutors launched an investigation into allegations that Park bribed fellow lawmakers and other party members in a bid to muster votes for the 2008 chairmanship election for the then Grand National Party, now renamed the Saenuri Party.

Park had strongly denied the vote-buying allegations, but offered to resign from the parliamentary speaker seat last week amid escalating suspicion.

He virtually admitted to the allegation by indicating the presence of the longtime tradition to pay money to party convention participants.

Prosecutors also questioned Kim Hyo-jae, a former chief presidential aide, earlier in the week on suspicion Kim, as the emergency monitoring chief to Park's 2008 election camp, led the money distribution. Kim resigned as a senior political-affairs secretary to President Lee Myung-bak earlier this month in the face of the allegations.

(Yonhap News)