Seoul court acquits South Korean opposition leader on charges of instigating perjury

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korean opposition leader Lee Jae-myung was acquitted on Monday on charges that he persuaded a witness to lie in court to understate Lee’s past criminal conviction, in a rare moment of relief from broad legal troubles that threaten to derail his political career.

Lee, a firebrand lawmaker and chairperson of the liberal Democratic Party, thanked the Seoul Central District Court judge after the ruling for “bringing back truth and justice.” The prosecution didn’t immediately say whether it would appeal.

The same court earlier this month sentenced Lee to a suspended prison term for violating election law by making false public statements while running for president in the 2022 election, which he narrowly lost to conservative rival Yoon Suk Yeol.

If that conviction stands, Lee would be unseated as a lawmaker and barred from running for president in the next election, for which polls now show him to be the favorite. But Lee, who is facing five different trials over corruption and other charges, will likely challenge any guilty verdict he receives, and it’s uncertain whether the Supreme Court would decide on any of the cases before the vote in March 2027.

The more serious charges against Lee are allegations that he provided unlawful favors to private investors that reaped huge profits from two dubious development projects in the city of Seongnam, where he had been mayor. He is also indicted on charges that he pressured a local businessman into sending millions of dollars in illegal payments to North Korea while attempting to set up a visit to the country that never materialized.

The ruling Monday at the Seoul court was about whether Lee pressured a former employee of Seongnam into giving false testimony in court in 2019. The testimony was meant to downplay Lee’s 2002 conviction that, as a lawyer, he had helped a journalist of KBS television to impersonate a prosecutor to secure an interview with then-Seongnam Mayor Kim Byung-ryang over corruption suspicions regarding the allocation of new apartments.

Lee was later elected as Seongnam’s mayor in 2010 and held the job until 2018. While running for Gyeonggi provincial governor in 2018, Lee said he had been wrongly accused over the incident, prompting prosecutors to indict him on charges of violating election laws by making false statements during a campaigning period.

Lee was acquitted in 2019, partially based on the testimony of Kim Jin-sung, a Seongnam city employee, who had worked as Kim’s secretary and said the former mayor contemplated dropping charges against KBS to establish Lee as the main culprit in the incident.

Prosecutors indicted Lee on charges of instigating perjury in October last year, presenting transcripts of telephone conversations that they said showed him persuading the Seongnam city employee to testify in court that Lee was framed.

In acquitting Lee, the court ruled that evidence presented by prosecutors, including two telephone conversations between Lee and the Seongnam city employee in December 2018, was insufficient to prove that Lee had the intent to instigate perjury or knowledge about what the employee was planning to testify.

It said Lee’s conversation with the Seongnam employee was part of a normal process of checking what a witness remembers or knows, and that his request for a favorable testimony fell within a reasonable exercise of his right as a defendant as he fought charges of election law violations.

However, the court handed out a 5 million won ($3,560) fine to the Seongnam city employee, saying that he admitted to having no memory or knowledge of discussions between the former mayor and KBS over dropping charges. Han Dong-hoon, leader of Yoon's conservative People Power Party, posted on Facebook that he respects the court's ruling but questioned how “only the person who committed perjury is guilty and the person who suborned perjury is not guilty.”