The Jeongsu Scholarship Foundation is again haunting the Saenuri Party’s presidential candidate Park Geun-hye.

According to news reports, the foundation has decided to sell off its stake in Munhwa Broadcasting Corp. and the Busan Ilbo, the largest daily in Busan, and use the sales proceeds for welfare projects in Busan and its surrounding South Gyeongsang Province.

The foundation’s president Choe Phil-lip recently met MBC officials and agreed to sell its 30 percent stake in the broadcaster to the public next year in time for its planned initial public offering.

At the meeting, Choe also disclosed the foundation’s signing of a memorandum of understanding with a group of corporations based in Busan to dispose of its 100 percent stake in the Busan Ilbo.

Choe said the JSF would use revenues from the asset sales, estimated at 600 billion won ($530 million), for the welfare of residents in the Busan-Gyeongnam region, especially for college students, the aged and people with illnesses.

The foundation reportedly plans to announce its decisions on Oct. 19.

We do not know what has motivated the foundation to push for such a plan, but it is not a well-advised move. It has provided ammunition for critics to attack the Saenuri candidate, who served as the foundation’s head for 10 years until 2005.

The main opposition Democratic United Party has long argued that the foundation should return its assets to society, given that they were extorted from Kim Ji-tae, a Busan-based businessman, in 1962 by former President Park Chung-hee, father of the Saenuri presidential runner.

Kim’s son filed a suit to reclaim the assets in 2010, but the court ruled against him last February, saying the statute of limitations for the case had expired. But the court did acknowledge that Kim had been forced to “donate” his assets to the state.

The court’s ruling led the DUP to step up pressure on the Saenuri candidate to return the JSF’s ill-gotten assets to society. Park’s response to the DUP offensive has been that the party is barking up the wrong tree because she has had no relations with the foundation since 2005.

Yet the JSF’s plan to use the funds from asset sales for welfare projects in Busan and South Gyeongsang Province has fueled suspicions that the foundation’s directors are not politically neutral.

The DUP suspects that the scheme is aimed at boosting support for Park in the Busan region, which is seen to hold the key to the outcome of the December election.

The region has traditionally been a bastion of the Saenuri Party, but this is not likely to be the case in this election as DUP candidate Moon Jae-in and independent candidate Ahn Cheol-soo both hail from Busan.

The JSF’s plan to dispose of its stakes in the two media organizations is also controversial. The foundation cannot sell the MBC shares freely given the public nature of the broadcaster.

According to reports, MBC’s management has been promoting the privatization of the broadcaster without the endorsement of the Foundation for Broadcast Culture, a nonprofit corporation that holds the remaining 70 percent.

Privatizing MBC is an issue that cannot be left to its management alone. It needs to be discussed in public. This means the JFC cannot sell its shareholdings until a consensus has been reached on the matter.

The foundation’s plan to sell its Busan Ilbo shareholdings also ignores the injunction the court granted in March on its disposal of the shares.

The opposition DUP now threatens to boycott the ongoing parliamentary session should the foundation go ahead with its asset sales plans. It also urges the Saenuri candidate to return the foundation’s assets to society in a more fair and transparent way.

The key to resolving the JSF problem lies with the foundation’s incumbent directors ― they should step down voluntarily. Although Park denies any ties with them, it is undeniable that they are all close to her. But as she notes, she is no longer in a position to order them to resign.

In fact, nobody has the authority to force them to step down because they have not committed any wrongdoing. Therefore, the only solution available is for the directors to quit voluntarily, allowing more neutral figures to run the foundation.