Confidante's intervention in state affairs puts S. Korean president in crisis

Park's acknowledgement reversed denials by her senior aides of media speculations. Lee Won-jong, presidential chief of staff who resigned on Sunday, told a parliamentary hearing that he had no idea how such a story that could not exist "even in feudal days" was being printed in local press.

Local cable channel JTBC reported on Monday that it obtained a tablet computer, once owned by Choi. It contained Park's speeches and statements from 2012 to early 2014. Based on the computer's record, Choi is estimated to have received files before Park's actual delivery.

The files included Park's landmark Dresden speech made in Germany in 2014 that laid out her vision over reunification with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). According to TV footage, many words were marked in red, indicating an editing after Choi's review.

Hankyoreh newspaper reported Wednesday that copies of presidential reports were brought to Choi every day by early 2016, citing a former employee of one of the two foundations controlled by Choi.

The former secretary-general of the Mir foundation was quoted as saying Choi meddled in major national decisions, including the shutdown of the Kaesong Industrial Complex and the appointment of ministers. The decisions were made after consulting with Choi's own advisers, including a commercial film director and a former fencer of the national team.

The symbol of the last remaining inter-Korean economic cooperation in the DPRK's border town of Kaesong has been closed down by South Korea following Pyongyang's fourth nuclear test in January and the launch in February of a long-range rocket.

President Park reshuffled her secretariat on Sunday to try to soothe the public fury that placed the president into a crisis before next year's presidential election in December.

Both ruling and opposition parties called on the embattled president to dissolve the current cabinet and form a grand-coalition government by appointing a politically-neutral prime minister and letting him choose cabinet members.