The court’s judgment against Lee Jae-myung, chairman of the Democratic Party of Korea, who was indicted on charges of making false remarks (violation of the Public Official Election Act) in 2021 and sentenced to a suspended sentence of imprisonment equivalent to invalidation of election in the first trial was overturned. Representative Lee, who was sentenced to one year in prison and two years of probation in the first trial, was acquitted in the second trial.
The Seoul High Court’s Criminal Chamber 6-2 (presiding judge Choi Eun-jung) found Lee not guilty on Wednesday. The court judged that Kim Moon-ki, the former chief of the Seongnam Urban Development Corporation’s development project, was not aware of when he was mayor of Seongnam, and that the re-use of the Baekhyun-dong site was due to pressure from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport does not constitute publication of false information under the Public Official Election Act.
When asked in a broadcast interview in December 2021, “Do you know Kim Moon-ki, the former deputy director who died while being investigated for the development of Daejang-dong?” Lee answered, “I didn’t know,” even though he knew Kim, and after the controversy over the preferential treatment of repurposing the site in Baekhyun-dong, Seongnam-si, Gyeonggi-do, he said at a parliamentary audit in October 2021, “The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport threatened to make it a problem of dereliction of duty, so we were forced to change the use.” He was put on trial in 2022 on charges of spreading false information in the election.
SAM KIM
US ASIA JOJURNAL
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