Daughter of ex-justice minister indicted on med school admission fraud

Cho Min, right, with her father Cho Kuk, former Justice Minsiter during the Moon Jae-in government, speaks at an event in Busan in April. [YONHAP]

Cho Min, the daughter of former Justice Minister Cho Kuk, has been indicted on charges of forgery.

The prosecution alleges that Cho Min falsified documents for her college and medical school admission and forged a volunteer certificate.

The statute of limitations for her case was set to expire later this month.

After the news broke the prosecution was considering filing charges against Cho Min, she announced that she was surrendering her doctor's license and added that she was dropping her appeals case against Korea University, which revoked her admission and bachelor's degree, and Pusan National University, where she attended medical school, in relation to her matriculation.

Both universities concluded that the documents Cho Min submitted, including certificates of her volunteer work and internships at institutions such as Seoul National University's Center for Public Interest and Human Rights Law, as well as Kongju National University's bioscience research center, were fabricated.

Cho Min's father, Cho Kuk, was a law professor at Seoul National University before he worked as the civil affairs secretary for President Moon Jae-in and later as justice minister in the same administration.

An internship certificate from Dongyang University, which Cho Min's mother, Chung Kyung-sim, a former professor at the school, forged, was also used in Cho Min's medical school admission.

Cho Min used these falsified and forged documents to get into Pusan National University's medical school.

She also has never taken the Medical Education Eligibility Test that is often required in medical school admissions.

Pusan National University revoked her admission in April 2022, which became the primary reason for the revocation of her doctor's license.

Chung Kyung-sim has been in prison since 2020 after the Seoul Central District Court sentenced her to four years behind bars.

The Supreme Court upheld the ruling in January 2021.

Cho Kuk was sentenced to two years behind bars for his involvement in fabricating his children's documents in February, also for school admissions.

Cho Kuk, however, was not imprisoned afterward as he appealed the decision, and the court determined there was no risk of him fleeing the country or tampering with the evidence.

Cho Kuk's son, Cho Won, also said that he is relinquishing the master's degree he earned from Yonsei University.

His internship documents, which were used in the admissions, are also suspected of being fabricated.

Considering the statute of limitations for forgery is seven years, Cho Min's was supposed to expire in June 2021, as she enrolled in medical school in 2014.

However, the expiration was delayed for two years until the final ruling against her mother, who was indicted in November 2019, was reached at the Supreme Court last year.

Cho Min opened a YouTube channel on May 12 and currently has more than 276,000 subscribers. She also released a song in June, on cats.

BY LEE HO-JEONG [lee.hojeong@joongang.co.kr]