Chairman Eulji Foundation's Son Running Hospital Cafe at Age 12

Criticism of the Board for Failing to Check the Foundation Family's Arbitrary Control

It has been revealed that when Gangnam Eulji Hospital under the Eulji Foundation opened, the operating rights for the prime business on the first floor?a cafe?were given to the chairman's four children, who were teenagers at the time. The foundation's chairman's family is being criticized for monopolizing the hospital's lucrative business by even using their children's names. There are also criticisms that the foundation's board of directors, which should uphold fair and transparent management, neglected to check the chairman family's profiteering.

Chairman Park Jun-young of Eulji Foundation. [Photo by Yonhap News]

According to the academy and medical industries on the 26th, the representatives of 'Cafe105 Gangnam Eulji Hospital Branch,' which opened on the first floor of Gangnam Eulji Hospital in September 2009, were the chairman Park's four children. Each was registered as a general VAT taxpayer and joint representative, and all were teenagers at the time, with the youngest child being an elementary school student under 12 years old.

Medium to large hospitals in Seoul are always crowded with patients and their families, making this a so-called "business where you can swim with your feet on the ground," guaranteeing profits without much promotion. Although the registered representatives were the children, there is suspicion that the foundation family, including Chairman Park, effectively managed the store and took the profits.

The cafe closed on December 12, 2011, about two years after the hospital opened. Some speculate that the foundation family may have used their children as "figurehead owners" to evade taxes. A common tax evasion method among wealthy individuals is to open businesses under others' names and repeatedly open and close them to reduce or avoid gift taxes and other taxes. Since the foundation family, who control the board, ran a separate profit-making business within the hospital, such suspicions inevitably grow stronger.

Regarding this, the Eulji Academy stated, "At the time in 2009, Gangnam Eulji University Hospital was a small hospital with about 30 employees, and the cafe was a small store about the size of three tables," emphasizing, "Since it was a business that closed after two years due to losses, it is unrelated to tax evasion."

There is a view that the reason the Eulji Foundation family could monopolize the operation of the first-floor cafe at Gangnam Eulji Hospital is that the foundation's board of directors was not operating independently. A board that cannot check the foundation family can be a fatal flaw that undermines the public interest of the business.

As unethical abuses by the foundation family, such as Chairman Park's self-prescription of drugs and self-receipt of fraudulent payments, have come to light, suspicions are deepening that the foundation family has effectively privatized the board of directors.

The Eulji Foundation and its subsidiaries, including Eulji Hospital and Eulji Academy, are effectively controlled by the couple Park Jun-young and Hong Seong-hee. Chairman Park of the Eulji Foundation serves as chairman of Eulji Academy, and the hospital's chairman is his wife, Director Hong. Director Hong also serves as president of Eulji University.

Recently, the Eulji Foundation unofficially increased its stake in Yonhap News TV to 30.08%. Currently, the largest shareholder of Yonhap News TV is Yonhap News with 29.891%, but if the Korea Communications Commission approves the change of the largest shareholder requested by the Eulji Foundation, the largest shareholder of Yonhap News TV will change to the Eulji Foundation.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.