The court on Tuesday suspended proceedings in the third-party bribery trial of Lee Jae-myung, leader of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea, a case in which a million dollars in cash flowed illegally into North Korea five years ago.
In 2019 as governor of Gyeonggi Province, Lee allegedly made Ssangbangwool Group give North Korea $8 million that the provincial government should have given out of its own coffers: $5 million in expenses for a provincial project to set up smart farms in the North and $3 million in advance expenses for his visit to the North. The money was delivered illegally without government authorization.
The suspension of proceedings came after the three Suwon District Court judges in charge of the trial accepted Lee's request for their recusal from the case. He filed the application on Dec. 13, his lawyers made arguments for it on Tuesday. With the bench accepting their arguments, the trial was immediately halted.
Lee's lawyers raised the possibility that the judges are predisposed to convict Lee because he was indicted as an accomplice of Lee Hwa-young, former vice governor of the province sentenced to nine years and six months in prison in the first trial of the same case. Their point was that the judges are unable to view the case from the assumption that Lee is innocent before he is proven guilty.
A different judge in the same district court will decide whether or not the judges should be recused, but an applicant can take the issue up to the Supreme Court. It is said to take two or three months to reach a final judgment. Lee was indicted in June, but a full-fledged trial has not yet begun because Lee's lawyers have delayed it. Now that the judges accepted his application for their recusal, further delays are inevitable. The chief judge presiding over the trial is subject to a regular reshuffle next February. If he is transferred elsewhere, a new judge will have to hear the case anew. A year may have passed without a trial. This is not a trial but an abuse of judicial procedure.
A separate, appellate trial of Lee's alleged violations of election law is also being delayed.
He was sentenced last month to one year in prison, suspended for two years, and appealed the decision. He is charged with publicizing false information as a candidate in the 2022 presidential election.
The Seoul High Court sent notice to Lee's side on Nov. 22 that it had agreed to hear the appeal, but was told the document could not be served because "the gate was closed" and "he was absent." The court was rebuffed again on Dec. 9 and 11 for the same reasons. In the end, it resorted to "service by publication," whereby lawsuit documents are published on the court's website, and after a certain period, the appellant is considered to have been served notice.
An appeal trial can begin only if a defendant files a brief on the reasons for appeal within 20 days of receiving the notice. Lee is a lawyer-turned-politician. He is the last man not to know this.
Lee has not yet hired a lawyer for the appeal, apparently to avoid receiving the notice. If a defendant and his or her lawyer do not receive it, subsequent procedures cannot progress. One can only say that he is delaying his trial intentionally. If the first-trial ruling is upheld as final in the top court, he will not only lose his parliamentary seat but also be disqualified to run in an election for 10 years.
At a press conference in the National Assembly building on Dec. 15, he urged the Constitutional Court to move quickly in the process to dismiss President Yoon Suk Yeol.
While Lee presumes Yoon's guilt and demands a rapid impeachment trial, he insists on the presumption of innocence for himself and is delaying his trials. This is a shameless contradiction and double standard.
