2-yr prison term sought for opposition leader Lee for alleged falsehood during election

Prosecutors on Friday demanded a two-year prison sentence for opposition leader Lee Jae-myung on charges of making false statements during the previous presidential election, a sentence that, if finalized, would bar him from running in the next election.

Lee, chair of the main opposition Democratic Party (DP), was indicted in September 2022 on charges of lying during the presidential campaign about a high-profile land development project pursued by the Seongnam city government, south of Seoul, during his term as mayor.

During the closing hearing at the Seoul Central District Court, prosecutors demanded a two-year prison term for Lee, accusing him of “repeatedly lying to the public in order to be elected as president.”

Lee, however, pleaded innocent during the hearing, insisting that he had “never intentionally told a lie that goes against my memory, at least in relation to this case.”

“I made significant efforts to avoid violating election rules, as I went through emotional hardships, while spending a lot of money and with people surrounding me suffering as well,” Lee said, referring to his previous indictments, for which he was later found not guilty.

“There would be no benefit for a presidential candidate deliberately telling such a lie,” Lee added, arguing that “the abuse of power by the prosecutors will hurt democracy.”

The court is expected to deliver the verdict on Nov. 15 at 2:30 p.m.

A lawmaker who receives a finalized sentence of a 1 million-won (US$749.85) fine or more for violating the Public Official Election Act by making false statements during an election automatically loses their parliamentary seat and is barred from running in official elections for the next five years.

After arriving at the court for the hearing, Lee claimed that prosecutors fabricated the charges against him.

“All these affairs will go down in history, and the public will decide for themselves,” Lee told reporters, surrounded by a group of DP lawmakers who came to support him at the hearing, with supporters chanting his name.

“The court, the last bastion of human rights and democracy, will correctly determine the truth of the case and reach a just conclusion,” Lee said.

The land development project was at the center of a scandal that plagued Lee during the presidential election, with allegations that Seongnam granted favors to a private developer to secure the lucrative apartment development in the city’s Daejang-dong district and reap a windfall.

Prosecutors charged Lee with making false remarks in violation of the Public Official Election Act for stating during a television interview in December 2021 that he did not know Kim Moon-ki, who was then a senior development official at Seongnam Development Corp, the city’s development agency, while he was mayor.

Kim, a key figure in the scandal, was found dead at his office while under investigation.

The DP leader is also charged with lying about being verbally threatened by the land ministry to grant an administrative land permit for a separate development project in Seongnam’s Baekhyeon-dong district, during a parliamentary session in October 2021.

Lee ran unsuccessfully against President Yoon Suk Yeol in the March 2022 presidential election. He is widely expected to run again in the next election.

The opposition leader has consistently denied the charges, accusing prosecutors of fabricating politically motivated investigations.

This case is expected to be the first court ruling among the seven cases in which Lee is standing trial, including bribery and other charges related to the development scandal.