An aide to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan yesterday acknowledged ties with a shady South Korean man indicted Thursday for bribery in the oil-for-food scandal. Maurice Strong, a Canadian businessman who serves as Annan's special adviser for North Korea, said Tongsun Park invested in an energy company with which he was associated in 1997. Park, 70, who admitted to paying bribes to more than 30 U.S. congressmen during the "Koreagate" influence-peddling scandal of the 1970s, was accused last week of helping to steer payoffs from Saddam Hussein to two high-ranking U.N. officials. He is living in South Korea as a fugitive. Strong, who was also a senior adviser to the World Bank, said he "continued to maintain a relationship" with Park, who he claimed advised him on North Korean issues. But Strong insisted he had "no connection whatsoever with the U.N.'s Iraq oil-for-food program." A government witness has said Park told him he had invested about $1 million of Saddam's money in a Canadian company established by the son of a U.N. official in 1997 or 1998. He also claimed he used $5 million in Iraqi money to fund the official's business dealings. But there is no proof that the official was Strong, although the probe is continuing.