Senior Education Ministry official Kry
Seang Long was charged with sexually assaulting his interpreter during
an official visit to South Korea in late May and released after the
Cambodian Embassy intervened and paid more than $12,000 in fines,
Cambodian and South Korean officials said on Wednesday.
Mr. Seang Long, who attended the
three-day 2016 Asean+3 HRD Forum in Seoul between May 23 and 25, stopped
short of admitting to the crime on Wednesday, but said the matter was
“already solved.”
Senior Education Ministry official Kry
Seang Long was charged with sexually assaulting his interpreter during
an official visit to South Korea in late May and released after the
Cambodian Embassy intervened and paid more than $12,000 in fines,
Cambodian and South Korean officials said on Wednesday.
Mr. Seang Long, who attended the
three-day 2016 Asean+3 HRD Forum in Seoul between May 23 and 25, stopped
short of admitting to the crime on Wednesday, but said the matter was
“already solved.”
A Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency
official, who declined to give his name for legal reasons, confirmed
that a Cambodian Education Ministry official was arrested in Seoul on
May 26 for sexually molesting his interpreter.
“He was sentenced to [pay] $5,000 and set free,” the police official said by telephone. “He was suspected for sexual assault.”
Although Cambodian authorities have made
no public comments about the case in the weeks since Mr. Seang Long’s
arrest, it did not escape the attention of South Korean media.
On June 2, Korean news website Yes! Top
News reported that a 44-year-old Cambodian official was arrested at 10
p.m. on May 26 in Seoul’s Guro-gu district. In an article published on
Tuesday, the News1 Korea site stated that the official’s interpreter
called police after he forcefully wrapped his arms around her waist and
attempted to kiss her. Prosecutors asked that the official be barred
from future visits to South Korea, the article said.
According to a June 9 letter sent to the
Foreign Affairs Ministry by Long Dimanche, Cambodia’s new ambassador to
South Korea, the Seoul Southern District Prosecutor’s Office agreed to
release Mr. Seang Long after the Education Ministry agreed to pay 14.1
million won, or about $12,300, in fines.
“I would like to inform His Excellency
[Foreign Affairs Minister Prak Sokhonn] that on the evening of June 8,
2016, at 17:50 p.m. (Korean time), the Seoul Southern District
Prosecutor’s Office decided to completely drop the charge and release
Kry Seang Long from the Nambu detention center in Seoul,” the letter
said.
“But the prosecutor decided to require a
3.6 million won fine; 5 million won in fines for paying the victim; and
5.5 million won as a lawyer’s fee,” it said, adding that “this whole
budget was provided by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport for
settling compensation.”
According to the letter, the embassy
issued three separate diplomatic notes requesting intervention to secure
Mr. Seang Long’s release: one to the judge’s office on May 27; a second
to the prosecutor’s office on June 3; and a third to South Korea’s
Foreign Affairs Ministry on June 5.
“In addition, embassy officials and I met
the prosecutor two times and met Kry Seang Long in person four times.
Currently, Kry Seang Long is staying at the embassy and will return to
Cambodia on June 10.”
Mr. Dimanche declined to comment on the case.
Education Ministry spokesman Ros Salin
said in a text message that “no Ministry officials had mission to Korea”
over the “last fews [sic] week[s].” He did not respond to further
requests for comment.
Chum Sounry, a spokesman for the Foreign
Affairs Ministry, confirmed that an Education Ministry official was
arrested, charged and released in Seoul, but said he did not know the
man’s name or position. “Because of the embassy’s intervention, this
issue was solved,” he said.
In a series of Facebook messages on
Wednesday evening, Mr. Seang Long did not explicitly admit to assaulting
his interpreter, but said: “The problem is already solved.”
He declined to provide details about the incident and urged reporters not to publish a story about it.
“[P]lease do not publish it,” he said. “I beg you.”
A brochure posted to the 2016 Asean+3 HRD
Forum’s Facebook page bills the three-day conference as a training
event for promoting human-resource skills in emerging economies.
Photographs of Mr. Long’s visit to Seoul
for the forum posted to his Facebook page show him eating South Korean
food, posing under a rose trellis and touring the “careers-themed
experience park” JobWorld. Other photos show him receiving a medal from
Prime Minister Hun Sen and attending past conferences in Bali, Bangkok
and South Korea.
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