Cho Kuk, head of policy innovation at the Rebuilding Korea Party, argued that the Public Official Election Act should be revised so President Lee Jae-myung's trial is approached as "dismissal of indictment due to extinction of the right to prosecute (myeonso)" rather than "prosecutorial withdrawal." Myeonso refers to a case ending because a substantive condition for prosecution no longer exists. Earlier, Cho said that if prosecutors push ahead with withdrawing the indictment in Lee's trial, "there could be a legal setback."
On the 6th, Cho wrote on Facebook, "President Lee's case alleging violation of the Public Official Election Act is not one for 'withdrawal of indictment' but should go to 'myeonso' through a legal revision," adding, "Let's bring to a floor vote the amendment to the Public Official Election Act that has been sleeping in a cabinet for a year and a half."
The amendment Cho proposed to pass is an election law revision introduced by Shin Jeong-hoon of the Democratic Party of Korea. The bill deletes "act" from the elements of the offense of announcing false information under the Public Official Election Act. This is also related to President Lee's trial, which the Supreme Court remanded with a guilty purport and is currently suspended.
As a presidential candidate in 2022, Lee was indicted on charges of announcing false information under the election law after remarks to the effect that he "did not know Kim Moon-gi, head of Development Division 1 at the Seongnam Development Corporation," and that the "Baekhyeon-dong zoning change was done because the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport threatened [us]." In the second trial, the court viewed Lee's remarks as "recognition" rather than an "act" and acquitted him, but at the Supreme Court hearing in May last year, the remarks were seen as an "act," and the case was remanded with a guilty purport. If the law is revised to delete "act" from the elements of the offense of announcing false information, Lee would receive myeonso.
Cho said, "Because the Supreme Court remanded the Lee Jae-myung case with a guilty purport and it is pending in the appellate court, withdrawal of indictment is realistically impossible, and I emphasized that we must choose the '正攻法,' a legitimate, straightforward approach, of revising the offense of announcing false information."
He added, "The term 'act' was added in the 2000 election law revision, and because it is far more comprehensive and vague than other concepts defining false information, it has been criticized for inviting arbitrary law enforcement," and said, "Reverting the offense of announcing false information to the pre-2000 standard is not an issue of progressives versus conservatives or left versus right."