The bribery case against a Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport assistant director indicted by the Kim Keon-hee special counsel was dismissed on appeal as well. The court found it difficult to see a reasonable connection between this case and the suspicion over the route change of the Seoul–Yangpyeong Expressway, which is the subject of the special counsel law.
The Criminal Division 13 of the Seoul High Court (High Court Judges Kim Mu-shin, Lee Woo-hee, and Yoo Dong-gyun) on Apr. 9 rejected the special counsel's appeal in the appellate trial of a person surnamed Kim, who was indicted on bribery charges under the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Crimes. The panel said, "It is hard to see that the lower court's decision was based on a misinterpretation of the law."
The panel did not recognize a link between the bribery case and the Yangpyeong Expressway suspicion. The panel said, "It is difficult to see that a reasonable connection is recognized between the bribery case and the Yangpyeong Expressway case," adding, "It does not appear that the evidence overlaps or that authority is recognized to investigate and indict the case as a related criminal act." Even if the starting point of the special counsel's investigation was the Yangpyeong Expressway suspicion, the court found that the scope of investigation under the special counsel law could not be expanded to include the subsequently revealed bribery case.
From June 2023 to Nov. 2024, Kim was brought to trial on charges of receiving 35 million won in cash and 1 million won in golf merchandise gift certificates in return for helping a service contractor secure a national road retaining wall construction service. While looking into the Yangpyeong Expressway suspicion, the special counsel searched Kim's residence and found 5 million won in cash, then traced the flow of funds, identified a separate bribery allegation, and indicted Kim.
Earlier, the first trial was also dismissed for the same reason. The first-instance panel determined that it was difficult to recognize temporal, typological, and personal connections between the Yangpyeong Expressway suspicion and this case, and that even based on the materials obtained during the investigation, the special counsel could have sufficiently known that the two cases were unrelated. The special counsel appealed, arguing a misinterpretation of the law regarding the scope of investigation targets, but the appellate judgment did not change.