The Seoul Central District Court on Tuesday gave jail terms of a maximum of five years to seven people for attacking the server of the National Election Commission website during the Oct. 26 by-election.
Judge Lee Won-beom ordered 28-year-old Gong, a former secretary of former ruling party lawmaker Choi Ku-sik, and Kim, a former secretary of National Assembly Speaker Park Hee-tae, to spend five years each in prison for orchestrating and commanding the distributed denial of service attack on the election day.
Lee also handed down a 54-month imprisonment term to Kang, an IT firm owner, for executing the cyber attack with four other engineers who were given 18- to 54-month terms for the same charges.
The court acknowledged that their crime was intended to block young and liberal voters from accessing to the website so that they would give up on voting, benefiting the conservative ruling party to win the election. The party, however, lost to liberal candidate Park Won-soon for Seoul’s mayoral position.
By Bae Ji-sook (
baejisook@heraldcorp.com)
