Park Sang-don, the mayor of Cheonan, received a six-month prison sentence with a two-year probation on the 24th from the Supreme Court in a retrial concerning violations of the Public Official Election Act. As a result, Mayor Park's election has been declared invalid.
The Supreme Court's Third Division (Chief Justice Eom Sang-pil) upheld the ruling of the retrial regarding Mayor Park's violations of the Public Official Election Act. Previously, the retrial court found Park partly guilty and sentenced him to six months in prison with a two-year probation. According to the Public Official Election Act, if an elected public official is convicted of a violation of the election law with a fine of over 1 million won, their election will be invalidated, resulting in the loss of their position.
Earlier, Mayor Park was indicted on charges of publicizing false facts (charge of publicizing false facts) by stating in promotional materials for candidates and election press releases during the local election in June 2022 that Cheonan's employment rate ranked second in the nation and its unemployment rate was the lowest in the country in the second half of 2021, excluding population criteria. This ranking was based on local governments with populations over 500,000. However, the Park camp argued that the promotional materials did not use the expression 'metropolitan area with a population of 500,000,' thus falsely implying that it was a ranking among the 228 local governments nationwide. In reality, during the local elections, the employment rate in Cheonan was ranked 86th in the nation, while the unemployment rate was ranked 111th.
Mayor Park was also charged (charge of using public employee status for election campaigning) with mobilizing public officials to produce election promotional videos and posting them on a personal YouTube account.
The first trial acquitted Mayor Park. The trial court noted, "There are strong suspicions that he was aware of the publicizing of false facts, but there is insufficient evidence to substantiate the charges." Prosecutors appealed the first trial's verdict.
The second trial found all of Mayor Park's charges guilty, sentencing him to one year in prison with a two-year probation. The second trial stated, "He neglected the duty to verify whether the facts to be publicized through promotional and press materials were true, and therefore the responsibility falls on Mayor Park." There had been differing opinions on whether there was any reckless intent between the first and second trials. Mayor Park challenged the verdict.
The Supreme Court overturned the second trial, returning the case to the Daejeon High Court with a not guilty ruling on the charge of publicizing false facts. The Supreme Court stated, "It cannot be concluded that Mayor Park had reckless intent simply because he failed to recognize the omission of the metropolitan criteria in the promotional and press materials." However, the charge of using public employee status for election campaigning was also acknowledged as guilty by the Supreme Court.
Subsequently, the retrial court sentenced Mayor Park to six months in prison with a two-year probation in January. The court accepted the Supreme Court's ruling and deemed the charge of publicizing false facts not guilty. However, it maintained the guilty ruling regarding the charge of using public employee status for election campaigning.
Mayor Park's camp filed a retrial on the guilty 부분. However, the Supreme Court did not accept it. On that day, the Supreme Court stated, "The part regarding the violation of the Public Official Election Act due to election campaigning using the status of a public official has already been confirmed as guilty in a prior Supreme Court ruling."