(LEAD) Opposition presidential candidate Yoon's wife refutes CV falsification allegations

(ATTN: UPDATES with Yoon's reaction in last 3 paras)

SEOUL, Dec. 14 (Yonhap) -- The wife of the main opposition People Power Party (PPP)'s presidential candidate, Yoon Suk-yeol, refuted allegations that she falsified her resume to land a teaching post at a college during a media interview aired Tuesday.

Cable news channel YTN reported Kim Keon-hee presented false or exaggerated career achievements in a CV submitted to apply for a teaching job at Suwon Women's University in 2007.

They included false claims that she had the top award from the Seoul International Cartoon & Animation Festival in 2004 and served as an executive at the Korea Association of Game Industry for three years since 2002, according to the report.

Kim eventually earned the position and worked for a year.

Kim ambiguously sidestepped the allegations, saying they were the result of her "greed to stand out." "If that can be called a crime, that will be a crime," she said.

Kim refuted the falsification allegation over her claimed job experience at the association.

"What is the matter when I did not use the award record for admission to a school," she said, adding that "should I be subject to this kind of scrutiny" for things done before marriage with Yoon.

Yoon's election camp also rebutted the report in a press release, saying Kim mistook the years of her term at the association, but the job experience is real.

"YTN categorically reported (Kim's CV descriptions) as fabricated job experiences and false award records, but that is different from the truth," a camp spokesperson said.

Appearing on a radio program, PPP Chairman Lee Jun-seok came to the defense of Kim.

"It should be considered that the affairs took place well before the marriage of the candidate and his spouse," Lee said.

"There can be a degree of possibilities of criticism if a presidential candidate as a public official fails to stop his wife's misdeeds after their marriage, but it would be too excessive to blame the candidate for things that happened before his marriage," he noted.

In an event with senior journalists later in the day, Yoon again disputed the allegations, noting, "I am not sure in terms of details, but overall they are not false career achievements."

He also refuted plagiarism allegations raised over his wife's doctoral thesis with Kookmin University.

"Dealing with digital 3D technology and related experiments, the thesis is not something writable by copying another thesis," Yoon said, adding his wife may return the thesis if it is found to be plagiarized.

pbr@yna.co.kr
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