Prosecutors asked police to reinvestigate Mos Tan, a professor at Liberty University in the United States, who raised allegations that President Lee Jae-myung was involved in a violent crime in his youth. Tan is also known by the Korean name Dan Hyun-myung.
According to legal sources on the 13th, the Criminal Division 1 of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office (Director General Shin Do-uk) the previous day asked police to investigate again the case of Professor Tan, who is accused of defamation by specifying false facts.
The case began with a complaint by the civic group Freedom Korea National Defense Corps. The group reported to police that during a press conference held last June at the National Press Building in Washington, D.C., Tan made false statements about the president.
It was found that Tan at the time said to the effect that "the president was involved in the murder of a girl during his teenage years, was sent to a juvenile detention center, and therefore did not attend middle and high school."
Police received the complaint and opened an investigation, but on the 9th of last month dismissed and declined to refer the portion of the remarks made in the United States. They determined that, given Tan is a foreign national and the remarks in question were made in the United States, domestic investigative authorities lack the right to prosecute.
Prosecutors reached a different conclusion. They said the place of crime cannot be viewed only as where the act occurred and must also include where the result of the crime occurred. Even if Tan spoke in the United States, since the victim, the president, is in Korea, there is room to view the result of the defamation as having occurred in Korea.
Prosecutors also determined that the investigation could not be closed merely because the complainant had not been questioned. Police cited the Freedom Korea National Defense Corps' lack of cooperation as a reason for non-referral, but prosecutors viewed that since police had already recognized the remarks on their own and investigated, they could proceed with the necessary investigation without questioning the complainant.
Tan served as the U.S. State Department's ambassador-at-large for global criminal justice in the first Trump administration. He has repeatedly made claims to the effect that there was election fraud in Korea.