Constitutional Court presidential candidate Park Han-chul apologized for failing to remain “clean and humble” after serving as a top prosecutor at his parliamentary confirmation hearing on Monday.

At the first day of the two-day hearing, the main opposition Democratic United Party honed in on the high salary he received from the law firm Kim & Chang in 2010.

After serving as the chief of the Eastern District Prosecutors’ Office in Seoul in 2010, Park worked for the law firm Kim & Chang where he received more than 240 million won ($210,000) for four months of service. 

“As someone who has held high public office, I am sorry that I did not maintain a clean and humble life,” Park said, adding that the high salary he received could generate “a feeling of disharmony” among the people. He also said that he would not work at a law firm after his term as Constitutional Court president.

Park, however, denied that he received special treatment from the firm due to his experience as a high-level prosecutor, saying that he did not use his previous post to influence any case handled by the company.

Park played down the concerns for his past as at the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office’s public security department, saying that he “thought deeply about constitutional principles and endeavored to achieve a balance” while working as a public prosecutor.

The public security department’s stated purpose is to protect the country from “offenses that could undermine public security,” and it has had jurisdiction over cases involving communists and other antigovernment forces.

As such, the department has been accused of bending the law to protect those in power, and has been found to have manipulated evidence to charge innocent people on a number of occasions in the past.

Other accusations raised against Park include showing conservative tendencies in passing judgments while he was a Constitutional Court justice, evading gift tax, and self-plagiarizing from a paper he wrote earlier in the thesis for his master’s degree.

By Choi He-suk  (cheesuk@heraldcorp.com)