Yoon

July 27 (Asia Today) — A South Korean court sentenced former President Yoon Suk Yeol on Monday to 18 months in prison, suspended for three years, after finding him guilty of making false statements during his successful 2022 presidential campaign.

The Seoul Central District Court said Yoon’s statements concerned his relationship with Jeon Seong-bae, a shaman also known as Geonjin, and his alleged introduction of a lawyer to former tax official Yoon Woo-jin.

“The impact of a candidate publicly making false statements during a debate or other campaign event on an election is extremely significant,” the court said. It added that the seriousness of Yoon’s conduct should not be regarded as minor.

Yoon’s attorneys said the court misunderstood the facts and relevant law and accepted only the special counsel’s arguments. They said they would appeal.

If the ruling is upheld by the Supreme Court, the main opposition People Power Party could be required to return about 39.7 billion won, or $27.1 million, in campaign expenses reimbursed by the government following Yoon’s election.

It would be the largest repayment of election expenses by a political party in South Korean history.

Yoon was charged over comments he made while running for president.

During an interview at the launch of a Buddhist leaders’ forum on Jan. 17, 2022, Yoon said a party official had introduced him to Jeon and that he and his wife, former first lady Kim Keon Hee, had never met Jeon together.

Prosecutors argued that Yoon had repeatedly received advice from Jeon and falsely portrayed their relationship as a chance introduction during the campaign.

Yoon was also charged over remarks at a Kwanhun Club debate on Dec. 14, 2021. He denied introducing a former senior prosecution official as an attorney for Yoon Woo-jin, a former district tax office chief who had faced a bribery investigation.

The court said Yoon’s statement contradicted the nature of his relationship with the former tax official.

Under South Korean election law, candidates who receive at least 15% of the vote can receive full government reimbursement of eligible campaign expenses. Candidates who receive between 10% and 15% can recover half of their expenses.

A political party must return reimbursed campaign expenses and the candidate’s deposit if its presidential nominee receives a final conviction carrying a fine of at least 1 million won, or about $680, for an election-law offense. The repayment must generally be made within 30 days.

The ruling adds to Yoon’s mounting legal problems following his removal from office over his brief declaration of martial law in December 2024.

The Supreme Court this month upheld a seven-year prison sentence against Yoon for offenses that included obstructing authorities attempting to detain him and violating legal procedures surrounding the martial law declaration.

Yoon was separately sentenced to life imprisonment in February after a lower court convicted him of leading an insurrection through the martial law declaration. His appeal is pending before the Seoul High Court.

In June, a lower court sentenced him to 30 years in prison for ordering military drone flights into North Korea in an alleged attempt to escalate tensions and create a justification for martial law. Yoon has appealed that ruling.

— Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.

Original Korean report: https://www.asiatoday.co.kr/kn/view.php?key=20260727010009828

A Seoul district court on Monday sentenced former President Yoon Suk Yeol to two years in prison after finding him partially guilty of accepting illegal political funds in the form of free opinion polls from a self-proclaimed power broker.

The Seoul Central District Court convicted the jailed former president on charges of violating the Political Funds Act in a ruling that marked a departure from a separate trial where his wife was acquitted on the same charges.

Special counsel Min Joong-ki’s team earlier indicted Yoon on charges of colluding with his wife, former first lady Kim Keon Hee, and receiving 58 opinion polls worth about 270 million won (US$180,100) in total for free from the power broker, Myung Tae-kyun, between April 2021 and March 2022.

In its ruling, the court recognized that Yoon had received 14 opinion polls from Myung for free over the period, sentencing him to prison and ordering a forfeiture of 13.96 million won.

It recognized the special counsel team’s argument that Yoon had promised to support former Rep. Kim Young-sun’s nomination as a candidate for the conservative People Power Party in the parliamentary by-elections in June 2022 in exchange for the opinion polls.

“The defendant’s actions sowed distrust in politics and undermined the public trust in the development of democracy,” the court said. “A punishment commensurate with the wrongdoing is inevitable.”

The court also sentenced Myung to 18 months in prison on the charges.

The special counsel team had sought a four-year prison sentence for Yoon and a three-year term for Myung.

The ruling diverged from an appellate court’s acquittal of Yoon’s wife on charges of accepting free opinion polls from Myung in a separate trial.

In Kim’s acquittal in April, the Seoul High Court ruled the couple could not be seen as profiting off the opinion polls as Myung had provided them to other people as well. Min’s team has appealed that ruling.

After the ruling, Yoon’s lawyers vowed to appeal, saying the verdict was “difficult to understand” given the former first lady’s acquittal in her trial.

The special counsel team called the latest ruling “very meaningful,” noting the bench appeared to have closely considered the various evidence and arguments presented in its judgment.

It marked the latest conviction for Yoon, who has been standing multiple trials following his failed 2024 martial law bid. In February, Yoon was sentenced to life imprisonment for leading an insurrection through his short-lived imposition of martial law.

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Seoul court sentences former leader for sending military drones into North Korea.

South Korea’s ex-President Yoon Suk Yeol has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for sending military drones into North Korea, a move prosecutors argued was aimed at creating a pretext for his disastrous martial law declaration in 2024.

The drone flights, which Pyongyang said included the dropping of propaganda leaflets, triggered a spike in military tensions between the nations in October 2024.

Special prosecutors, who had sought a 30-year prison term for Yoon, said in April that the ex-leader’s effort to “fabricate wartime conditions” with the drones had undermined state security.

Yoon was “given 30 years in jail” for the charges involving the drones, a spokesperson for the Seoul Central District Court told the AFP news agency on Friday, without giving further details.

Yoon had denied wrongdoing.

The ruling adds to a series of judgements against the ousted conservative leader, once South Korea’s top prosecutor, whose martial law order plunged Asia’s fourth-largest economy into its deepest political turmoil in decades.

In February, a South Korean court sentenced Yoon to life in prison after finding him guilty of leading an insurrection linked to the martial law attempt.

He was removed from office last year after the Constitutional Court upheld his impeachment, triggering a snap election that was won by liberal President Lee Jae Myung.

Yoon’s lawyers said he neither ordered nor later approved the drone operation, which they said was unrelated to martial law and instead a response to months of North Korean launches across the border of balloons stuffed with rubbish.

Yoon, who is already in custody, can appeal Friday’s lower court ruling.

Drone flights remain a flashpoint in tensions between the two Koreas, which remain technically at war.

Lee expressed regret earlier this year after an investigation found government officials had sent drones into the nuclear-armed North Korea in January.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s powerful sister called Lee’s statement “wise behaviour”, but hopes for a rapprochement faded after the diplomatically isolated nation returned to calling South Korea its “most hostile” enemy.

A special counsel team has determined former President Yoon Suk Yeol had prepared to declare martial law since late 2023, about a year before his failed bid in December 2024, officials said Monday.

Assistant special counsel Kim Ji-mi said in a briefing that the team has determined that Yoon had made preparations for martial law since November 2023 after questioning former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Kim Myung-soo.

The now-retired admiral is said to have told the team last month that Yoon asked him whether he would do anything he would order when they met on Nov. 29, 2023.

Yoon allegedly flew into a rage when he said he would follow them if they were just orders.

The team, led by special counsel Kwon Chang-young, has left open the possibility that Yoon’s alleged remarks may have been part of preliminary efforts to recruit top military officials for his martial law bid.

Kwon’s team earlier said Yoon appeared to be preparing for martial law since the first half of 2024, citing the outcome of its questioning of a military counterintelligence official.

Meanwhile, a separate special counsel team that ended its mandate late last year after a probe into Yoon had determined that martial law preparations took place before October 2023. The team cited a notebook belonging to a retired general convicted in connection with Yoon’s martial law bid.

A Seoul court, however, did not recognize the notebook as evidence during Yoon’s insurrection trial, where he was sentenced to life imprisonment over his failed martial law bid.

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