Amid endless discoveries of influence-peddling by a friend and aides of President Park Geun-hye, every strange and suspicious administrative action and public appointment demands new look and inquiry, and the February senior placement at National Pension Service (NPS), one of the world’s mightiest institutional players, is another one.

The choice of Kang Myun-wook as chief investment officer at the state pension fund running funds of 500 trillion won ($425 billion) raises questions as he was deemed less eligible compared with 18 candidates in paper credential. The top contender in the first round strangely did not make the short list, according to findings by the Maeil Business Newspaper on Thursday.

According to the exclusive report, among the 18 candidates, a person surnamed Yoo had passed the first screening with the highest score of 52.4, but didn’t even get the opportunity for an interview. Kang on the other hand made it to the final interview with much lower score of 45. He got the highest score in the interview among the seven shortlisted from all of the six judges. The newspaper has secured the screening score record of NPS recommendation committee to appoint a new chief investment officer from Oh Je-se, a lawmaker from the main opposition Minjoo Party.

The pension operator said the score was just for reference, and the judges actually did not score each of the applicants. It added that they shortlisted the final seven candidates through negotiation, and picked Kang as the finalist upon conclusion that his strong leadership would perfectly fit the job of leading the fund with an asset of 500 trillion won.

An external adviser who participated in the document screening said that there was something fishy as a person who had been chosen as the best applicant had been excluded from the final interview. He suggested An Chong-bum, former senior secretary for policy coordination at the presidential office might have influenced the selecting process.

The process has long been under suspicions as Kang graduated from Keisung High School in Daegu and SungKyunkwan University, the same schools of An. During the appointing process, market analysts expected former CIO of the Korea Investment Corporation Lee Dong-ik and former CIO of the Korean Federation of Community Credit Cooperatives Chung Jae-ho who had experience in managing a huge fund of 100 trillion won to be the strongest applicants.

“We must investigate to find out whether there was a pressure from the presidential office to select Kang as a director of the NPS,” said lawmaker Oh.

By Choi Jae-won and Oh Soo-hyun

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business News Korea & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]