First lady likely to escape 'Dior bag' indictment

First lady Kim Keon Hee is unlikely to be indicted for alleged antigraft rule violations, as the final legal procedure concerning her acceptance of luxury gifts totaling over 5 million won ($3,730), including a Christian Dior bag, has been cleared.

Outgoing Prosecutor General Lee One-seok told reporters on Monday on his way to his office in Seocho-gu in southern Seoul that he "respects" the recommendation Friday by a 15-member independent review panel of the Supreme Prosecutors' Office not to indict Kim.

"We have had a long deliberation over whether any conduct considered unwise, improper or undesirable should translate into a violation of the (South Korean) criminal law or not," Lee said.

"That's why I came to the conclusion that this matter should be reviewed at the (Supreme Prosecutors' Office's) external panel," Lee said, referring to a closed-door meeting of the panel for five hours Friday afternoon.

This largely echoed President Yoon Suk Yeol's remarks after Kim was accused of receiving the gift in footage captured by a hidden camera in September 2022. Yoon described the lawsuit as a political maneuver, but admitted his wife had committed "unwise conduct" in his interview with KBS in February. Yoon later apologized for Kim's conduct in a news conference in May.

Lee, whose two-year term as the nation's most powerful public prosecutor ends in a week, added that he had not interfered in the decision-making process of the external panel.

"If this conclusion fails to meet the public's expectation, I'm entirely to blame for this because I was not wise enough (to satisfy the public). But I think we should respect the outside experts' opinions," Lee said.

He also said Kim's case has been through every legal step to ensure that the decision not to indict the first lady was based on fair legal grounds.

"The rule of law would be deemed useless if we (cater to) arguments that any process or step should be repealed because the outcome of the process was not satisfactory (to some people)," Lee said.

On a personal note, however, Lee claimed that South Korea needs further legislative actions to address controversies about the legal gray area concerning the spouse of a public official in South Korea's antigraft rules, also known as the Kim Young-ran Act after a former Supreme Court justice.

The act covers acceptance of gifts by a spouse "in connection with the duties of the public servant," but does not allow prosecution of the spouse.

The external panel's unanimous recommendation not to indict Kim, coupled with Lee's comment about it, effectively eliminated the final legal obstacle in the Dior bag scandal involving Kim.

Otherwise, Kim could have been subject to the antigraft rule, under which violators could face up to three years of imprisonment or a 30 million won fine.

Earlier in August, the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office had concluded that Kim's antigraft rule violation allegations lack legal grounds. In June, the anticorruption agency ruled likewise.

Meanwhile, an attorney representing Kim has claimed that a public servant of the presidential office had disobeyed Kim's instruction to return the bag to Choi Jae-young, the Korean American pastor who gifted the bag to Kim.

Kim's representatives had reportedly expressed a stance to the prosecution that the state be the owner of the bag, not Kim herself.

Yoon's office declined to either comment on the prosecution's procedures, or confirm that she had expressed forfeiture of her ownership to the gifts.

Meanwhile, Kim faces other legal challenges.

Her fate could be determined in an appellate court verdict on Thursday at the Seoul High Court over her alleged involvement in stock price manipulation activities dating to the early 2010s. One of the perpetrators of the stock manipulation scandal is Kwon Oh-soo, the former head of imported car distributor Deutsch Motors who was given a two-year suspended sentence for orchestrating the stock manipulation at a lower court.

An unidentified person who stood trial for allowing market manipulators to use a personal stock trading account was found not guilty in the previous verdict. Kim, also suspected to have given manipulators access to her account, did not stand trial.