On October 29, 2020 the Supreme Court of South Korea upheld the ruling delivered by a lower court against the country’s former president, Lee Myung-bak.
It is worth noting the timeline of events. In April 2018, the 78-year-old Lee Myung-bak, who served as president of South Korea from 2008 to 2013, was charged on 16 counts, including corporate tax evasion, taking bribes from both the National Intelligence Service and Samsung Electronics, and embezzling funds from the auto parts company DAS, which was one that he effectively owned.
In October 2018, a district court delivered either guilty or partial verdicts against Lee Myung-bak for seven crimes, and sentenced him to 15 years in prison, making him the fourth former South Korean president to be convicted in a criminal case. The court concluded that Lee was the de facto owner of DAS, something which the ex-president consistently denied, and embezzled 25.2 billion wons in company funds.
However, five months later, Lee was released on bail, with health and other reasons cited.
In February 2020, a court of appeals sentenced him to 17 years in prison, and ordered that he pay a penalty of 13 billion wons ($11 million) and arrears accrued of 5,780,000 wons ($5 million). The longer period of time had to do with the fact that over that time the quantities of substantiated bribes had increased to 9.4 billion wons in total, which is about 800 million wons more than had previously come to light.
Out of this money, he received 8.9 billion wons from Samsung Corporation in exchange for extending a special pardon for the late Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee.
He was also charged with accepting bribes from former Woori Financial Group Chairman Lee Pal-sung, and former lawmaker Kim So-nam, in exchange for giving them government jobs.
Along with that, the court did not agree that Lee received money from the National Intelligence Service to use for his personal gain. Other issues also existed that they simply could not bring themselves to touch upon – for example, ambitious economic and infrastructure projects that all went up in smoke, even a lot of budgetary funds were pumped into them. And the contractors were business executives that attended the same Protestant parish as the president.
After that, Lee Myung-bak was again imprisoned but was released once again, six days later, after he filed an appeal against a court ruling that denied him bail, and the courts ruled that execution of the sentence be suspended pending a decision by the highest court. Therefore, all this time Lee was under house arrest, and never stopped declaring his innocence.
However, unlike the situation with Park Geun-hye, against whom accusations chiefly ring hollow, the corruption-related crimes committed by Lee Myung-bak are too well substantiated. And although good lawyers worked for him, unlike for Park, and his fellow party members were in no hurry to disavow him, the maximum that Lee’s defense could do was to prevent new charges from being brought against him.
After the verdict was upheld by the Supreme Court, 16 years of his sentence remained for the former head of state, since he had already served about a year behind bars. Unless he is granted amnesty, Lee Myung-bak will be released in 2036.
On November 2, 2020, Lee Myung-bak was returned to the Dongbu Detention Center in eastern Seoul to serve his sentence. Pursuant to the law that applies to former presidents, Lee Myung-bak was provided with a cell with an area of 13 square meters – the one in which he had already been in custody – and his own superintendent to help him with prison life, out of respect for his former status as president. The room has a television, mirror, table, wardrobe, and sink.
According to a Ministry of Justice spokesman, there is a possibility that the former president could serve his sentence in a detention facility, given his age and health condition, rather than being transferred to a prison, as was the case with Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo. Incidentally, other high-ranking prisoners are serving time in the same detention center, including Kim Ki-chun, former chief of staff for ex-president Park Geun-hye, former legislative deputy Lee Sang-deuk, Lee’s older brother, who was also convicted of accepting bribes, and Choi Soon-sil, a confidante of Park Geun-hye.
Before arriving at the detention facility, Lee met with his former employees and assistants, and issued a statement in which he strongly condemned the court’s decision as unfair and stated that “the truth will eventually come out”.
The ex-president’s statements that “the court’s decision is unfair and violates the rule of law” sparked public outrage. In the view held by The Korea Times, the Supreme Court lent credence to the principle that all are equal before the law. Now Lee should be imprisoned, admit his guilt, and ask for forgiveness from the people, since any time the president is imprisoned it represents humiliation for the entire nation.
In passing, the media “took a swipe at” Park Geun-hye, who had already served (in much less comfortable conditions) three of her twenty-year sentence (the reasons why her sentence was reduced merit a separate discussion), purporting that her supporters should refrain from claiming that the sentence she was handed was politically motivated.
However, the article ends even more curiously: “The Blue House and the ruling Democratic Party of Korea must learn from the experiences of former presidents so that these kinds of misfortunes do not happen again. And Lee must come to terms with it, and not brazenly declare his innocence despite the facts that have been demonstrated. This could be a springboard for the country not to repeat its past mistakes.”
Should this be taken to mean that the “special folder” on the current president is now sufficiently complete so that after he resigns he will become the target of a criminal case?
Konstantin Asmolov, PhD in history, leading research fellow at the Center for Korean Studies at the Institute of the Far East at the Russian Academy of Sciences, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
