South Korea’s Ex-first lady Kim Keon Hee appeals 20-month prison sentence in corruption trial
Seoul, Feb 2 (IANS/WISHAVWARTA) South Korea’s former first lady Kim Keon Hee on Monday appealed against a court ruling sentencing her to 20 months in prison for accepting luxury gifts from the Unification Church.
Last Wednesday, the Seoul Central District Court handed down the sentence, making Kim and her husband, ousted former President Yoon Suk Yeol, the country’s first former presidential couple to be imprisoned with criminal convictions.
The court found Kim guilty of accepting a Chanel bag and a Graff diamond necklace, along with business favors from the Unification Church in 2022, ordering her to also forfeit 12.8 million won (USD 8,770), Yonhap News Agency reported.
It, however, acquitted Kim of two other main charges she faced in the trial — involvement in a stock price manipulation scheme and violating the Political Funds Act.
Kim’s lawyers said they would challenge the guilty verdict, denying she had ever received the necklace worth 62.2 million won and disputing the court’s recognition of the transactional nature of the Chanel bag.
“We have filed an appeal to correct the facts and uncover the truth regarding her acceptance of an item related to a business favor from the Unification Church and the (court’s) recognition that she received a (valuable item) when in fact she did not,” they said in a statement.
The sentence was far shorter than the 15-year term sought by special counsel Min Joong-ki’s team, which filed an appeal last Friday, claiming “serious” misunderstandings of the facts in the ruling.
Kim had been charged with conspiring to manipulate the stock price of Deutsch Motors, a BMW dealer in South Korea, and making 810 million won in illegal profits between 2010 and 2012.
She was also indicted for violating the Political Funds Act for receiving free opinion polls, together with her husband, from a self-proclaimed power broker ahead of the 2022 presidential election.
The court said it could not determine that Kim served as an accomplice in the stock price manipulation, while also finding her not guilty of the other charge as the power broker did not exclusively give the polls to the couple.
Yoon, who is standing trial on charges of leading an insurrection through his short-lived imposition of martial law in 2024, has been sentenced to five years in prison on charges stemming from his failed martial law bid.
