Chung Bong-ju, a former opposition lawmaker who has gained fame as one of the four hosts of a podcast talk show, is set to be sent to prison because the Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision on Thursday. He had been sentenced by the lower court to one year in prison for making a false statement that President Lee Myung-bak was involved in a stock price manipulation scam.
The ruling also deprived Chung of his right to election to public office for the next 10 years, making it impossible for him to run in the April parliamentary elections. At the same time, his forthcoming imprisonment is a loss to the popular podcast focusing on ridiculing President Lee.
Prior to and following the final court decision, Chung’s supporters behaved in a most reprehensible manner. They began to run newspaper ads claiming he was innocent several days ahead of the ruling. They even held a demonstration to demand that the highest court reverse the lower court’s decision. One incumbent opposition lawmaker was quoted as saying that he would have voted “not guilty” if he were a justice.
When the final ruling was issued, they claimed that the highest court had decided wrongly and posted similar comments on Internet sites. They should have held their tongues and refrained from making derogatory remarks about the ruling, an outcome legitimately produced in the nation’s process of administering justice.
This is not to say that the court never errs. In fact, judges were pressured not infrequently to make rulings in favor of the powers that be when the nation was governed by military-backed dictators. One such case involved a Korean residing in Japan who had been ruled guilty of espionage for Pyongyang. A senior judge, overturning the ruling on Thursday, said the victim had been illegally detained and tortured into making self-incriminating confessions when no evidence of espionage had been found. He offered an apology on behalf of the judiciary.
Now few would claim that the court remains under the influence of the executive branch. Anyone who feels aggrieved by a court decision may bring his case to a higher court under the judicial system anchored in the Constitution and relevant statutes. Of course, a ruling by the Supreme Court is final, and it must be respected as such by all parties concerned.
