SEOUL, July 27 (AJP) - A South Korean court on Monday sentenced former President Yoon Suk Yeol to 18 months in prison, suspended for three years, after finding him guilty of making false statements during the campaign that carried him to the presidency in 2022.
The first-instance verdict could also deliver a heavy financial blow to the conservative People Power Party. If the sentence survives the appeals process, the party would be required to return 39.7 billion won, or about $27 million, in election expenses and related funds reimbursed by the National Election Commission.
The Seoul Central District Court’s Criminal Division 21, led by presiding Judge Cho Soon-pyo, ruled that Yoon violated the Public Official Election Act through statements concerning a former tax official and a controversial spiritual adviser with links to his wife, former first lady Kim Keon Hee.
The first charge involved remarks Yoon made at a nationally televised Kwanhun Club debate on Dec. 14, 2021, when he was the PPP’s presidential candidate. Yoon denied having introduced a lawyer, identified only by the surname Lee, to Yoon Woo-jin, a former chief of the Yongsan Tax Office.
The court, however, concluded that the former president had made the introduction, accepting the findings of a special counsel investigation launched into corruption and influence-peddling allegations surrounding Kim.
The second charge stemmed from an interview at a Buddhist leaders’ forum on Jan. 17, 2022. Yoon said that a party official had introduced him to Jeon Seong-bae, a self-styled spiritual adviser widely known as Geonjin Beopsa, and denied that he and Kim had met Jeon together.
The court found that Yoon had first met Jeon through Kim and that the couple maintained ties with him for more than a decade. Jeon later emerged as a central figure in investigations into allegations that individuals and organizations sought access to the presidential couple through unofficial intermediaries.
Special counsel Min Joong-ki’s team had requested a two-year prison sentence for Yoon at the final hearing in June. Yoon was indicted in December 2025 after the special counsel investigated a broad range of allegations involving the former first lady, including election interference, stock manipulation and the acceptance of valuables.
Under South Korea’s election law, candidates who are elected or receive at least 15 percent of the vote are generally entitled to full reimbursement of authorized campaign expenses. But when an election-invalidating sentence — a fine of at least 1 million won — becomes final, the reimbursed money must be returned.
For presidential candidates nominated by political parties, that financial obligation falls on the party that endorsed the candidate. The PPP received nearly 40 billion won after Yoon’s election, making the case potentially one of the most expensive election-law convictions in South Korean political history.
Yoon won the March 2022 presidential election with 48.56 percent of the vote, defeating liberal rival Lee Jae Myung, who received 47.83 percent. The gap of 0.73 percentage points was the narrowest in the country’s presidential election history.
The verdict carries no practical consequence for Yoon’s former presidential tenure because he was removed from office by the Constitutional Court in April 2025 over his short-lived declaration of martial law in December 2024.
Lee, Yoon’s opponent in the 2022 election, subsequently won the snap election held in June 2025 and began a five-year term as president. The PPP has since returned to the opposition and struggled to distance itself from Yoon’s martial-law legacy.
Monday’s suspended term also does not mean Yoon will be released. The Supreme Court earlier this month finalized a separate seven-year prison sentence against him for obstructing investigators’ attempts to detain him following the martial-law crisis. He has faced multiple criminal proceedings since his removal, including cases involving martial law, opinion polls and alleged interference in government and party affairs.
The PPP will not be required to return the 39.7 billion won unless the election-law conviction becomes final. The first-instance judgment remains subject to appeal.
People Power Party lawmakers raised questions with AJP about whether the judiciary had applied its standards fairly.
Four-term lawmaker Rep. Han Ki-ho argued that “there is a problem with fairness.”
“President Lee Jae Myung’s trial over the publication of false information was delayed for as long as four years, and it is wrong that the proceedings have now been suspended,” Han said.
“President Lee’s trial should also proceed and be brought to a conclusion.”
“I believe the ruling is excessively harsh compared with the handling of President Lee Jae Myung’s trial,” said Rep. Park Soo-young, a two-term lawmaker.
“It is too harsh to impose a prison sentence merely over whether Yoon met Jeon,” Park said.
“President Lee said that he had never forcibly committed his older brother to a psychiatric hospital, but he was acquitted because former Supreme Court Justice Kwon Soon Il went easy on him.”
Copyright ⓒ Aju Press All rights reserved.