South Korea's former parliament speaker Park Hee-tae was given Monday an eight-month jail term suspended for two years for bribing his way to the chairmanship of the ruling party in 2008.

Park is accused of ordering his aides to give a fellow ruling party lawmaker an envelope containing some three million won (2, 583 U.S. dollars) in an attempt to buy his vote before the party leadership contest.

At the 2008 convention, he was elected head of the conservative Grand National Party, a precursor to the Saenuri Party.

The Seoul Central District also gave a six-month suspended jail term to Kim Hyo-jae, a former presidential secretary who served as Park's secretary at the time.

The scandal forced the two to resign from their respective posts earlier this year.