By Lee Kyung-min
Former President Park Geun-hye hired three defense attorneys ahead of her first pre-trial conference scheduled for today, legal sources said Monday.
The three _ Lee Sang-chul, 59, Lee Dong-chan, 36, and Nam Ho-jung, 33 _ joined forces with the two lawyers, Chae Myung-sung and Yoo Young-ha, who have been struggling to devise a strategy following the court-issued arrest warrant that placed Park in a detention facility.
Lee Sang-chul is a former judge at the Seoul Central District Court (SCDC) and works at the same law firm with Nam. The firm's name is unidentified. Lee Dong-chan is the director-general for a conservative group of lawyers.
The SCDC will convene the pre-trial conference at 10 a.m. in courtroom 417 to hear from both the prosecution about the charges against Park and her defense attorneys about how she will plead. They will set a detailed schedule on each side's plan to call witnesses.
Given the proceeding is a pre-trial conference, the former president is not obliged to appear. However, she might, given past cases where Park's longtime friend and confidant Choi Soon-sil, the central figure in the influence-peddling scandal, appeared before the court for the pretrial session to state her innocence.
Park faces 18 charges including bribery, abuse of power, extortion and mishandling of classified state information.
Prosecutors say Park solicited and took bribes worth 59.2 billion won ($52 million) from three conglomerates _ Samsung, Lotte and SK _ for herself and Choi.
The SCDC also held a pre-trial court conference, Monday, over the case involving Woo Byung-woo, former presidential secretary for civil affairs.
He faces eight charges including abuse of power, dereliction of duty, perjury and violating the law governing independent inspector-led investigations.
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