The new head of Korea's Financial Supervisory Service has only been in the job a matter of days,... but he's already coming under fire for a series of overseas trips made when he was a lawmaker.
Prosecutors said Thursday they will investigate the new head of the F-S-S over the mounting claims, and on Friday they raided the offices of some of the institutions alleged to be involved.
Won Jung-hwan reports.

Kim Ki-sik, who took office as the head of the Financial Supervisory Service earlier this month,… is in the hot seat over his overseas trips sponsored by financial institutions while he was a lawmaker.
Kim is facing growing criticism for the trips paid for by the Korea Exchange, the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy and Woori Bank between 2014 and 2015.
Prosecutors said they will investigate Kim over the allegations,... and have filed a confiscation warrant on Friday against the related financial institutions to gather evidence.
Investigators from the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors' Office were sent to search the Seoul and Busan headquarters of the Korea Exchange Bank and Woori Bank and confiscate accounting documents to find out whether Kim received special treatment from those institutions.

Kim defended himself, saying that such trips were linked to his work as a lawmaker at that time,... and stressed he gave no favors to the institutions that paid for the trips.
But opposition parties on Tuesday raised their concerns against the new FSS chief.
The main opposition Liberty Korea Party pressed President Moon Jae-in to dismiss Kim from his position as head of the FSS, a role Kim has held for less than two weeks. The opposition party claim that the act of having the institutions cover his travel expenses could be constituted as bribery and abuse of power.
The left-wing Justice Party on Thursday also joined other opposition parties in demanding the resignation of Kim.

The Blue House on Monday rejected calls to fire Kim over the trips,… calling them inappropriate but legitimate.
It said it has been verifying the reports to determine whether Kim's trips did violate any law,… and has sought to put a shield around the dispute by deciding that all his overseas trips had been made to serve the public interest,... and thus were legitimate.

President Moon Jae-in said Friday morning that he will ask for Kim's resignation if there is an objective ruling that he has violated the law,... adding that if the overseas trips are judged as a breach of public officials' ethics rules, he will sack Kim even if the trips were not illegal.
Won Jung-hwan, Arirang News.