Seoul: The frontrunner in Wednesday`s election to be Seoul`s education supremo has had his campaign rocked by his own daughter accusing him of being a negligent father unfit to hold the office.
With just days to go before polling, Koh Seung-Duk, a celebrity lawyer and former lawmaker, was clear favourite to become the capital city`s next superintendent of schools -- a powerful post in education-obsessed South Korea.
But his chances took a battering at the weekend when his estranged 27-year-old daughter claimed in a Facebook posting that he "never partook in the education of his own children".
Candy Koh -- raised in the US by Koh`s ex-wife who divorced him when Candy was 11 -- said she had "next to no memories" of her father behaving as a parent before or after the divorce.
"Despite the existence of a telephone and Internet, Koh never called me or my brother to ask how we were doing," she wrote.
Koh, 56, made his name in the South as a prodigy who passed several, highly-competitive state exams at an unusually young age.
He has for decades lectured young South Koreans on study skills and the importance of education.
"As a child he neither educated nor rarely even spoke to, I must inform the citizens of Seoul that he does not qualify for this position," his daughter said.
The Facebook posting sparked a backlash against Koh on South Korean Internet portals and social networks, and received extensive coverage in Monday`s national dailies.
"Education chief election turning into the most sensational soap opera," the JoongAng Ilbo wrote in an editorial.
At a hastily-arranged press conference on Sunday, Koh said he would not be withdrawing his candidacy and said his daughter was taking part in a "political plot" organised by an election rival.
"I am truly sorry for my daughter. But I will fight against the political plot to bring me down," he said.