[Yonhap News Photo]
SEOUL -- For a second time this week, the wife of South Korea's Hanjin group chief Cho Yang-ho was dragged into a police station Wednesday for questioning about allegations that she verbally and physically assaulted company employees, housekeepers, flight attendants and security guards at her home.
The second interrogation came after Lee Myung-hee, 69, went through a grueling 15-hour interrogation on Monday. She is suspected of assaulting employees of Hanjin, a family-run conglomerate known as chaebol, which controls Korean Air, the country's top flag carrier.
Seoul police chief Lee Ju-min said earlier that investigators have secured statements from at least 11 victims, but he did not say whether Cho's wife would be detained. Allegations about her insulting remarks and abusive treatment of her personal staff and construction workers renovating her home fueled public anger at a time when her two daughters were investigated.
Hanjin has denied the wife cursed, screamed and physically abused them, sometimes kicking and slapping and even throwing a pair of scissors. The interrogation was the latest in a series of investigations by law enforcement authorities into the ruling family's illegal activities, abuse of power, assaults, tax evasion and smuggling of luxury goods.
Police have questioned Lee's youngest daughter, Chu Hyun-min, on charges of assault. She lost her temper during a business meeting on March 16 and threw a glass cup at an advertising company official. Many South Koreans saw it as emblematic of a generation of spoilt and arrogant offsprings of chaebol owners.
Last week, Lee’s eldest daughter, Cho Hyun-ah, who formerly served as Korean Air vice president, was quizzed by immigration authorities over allegations that she and her mother have illegally hired Filipino housemaids at their homes. Cho Hyun-ah was arrested in 2014 for an onboard tantrum when served macadamia nuts in a bag rather than a bowl. She was imprisoned for a year for violating aviation law but she was released in May 2015 after an appeals court suspended her sentence.
