The Supreme Court accepted the special counsel's request and postponed to the 24th the sentencing date for the final appeal, which had been set for the 16th, in first lady Kim Keon-hee's Deutsch Motors stock manipulation case, among others.
The Supreme Court's No. 2 Petty Bench (presiding Justice Park Young-jae) on the 15th postponed to 2 p.m. on the 24th the sentencing date for the final appeal in Kim's cases on alleged violations of the Financial Investment Services and Capital Markets Act, the Political Funds Act, and bribery by intermediary under the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Crimes. The cases had originally been scheduled to be sentenced at 10:15 a.m. on the 16th.
The special counsel the day before asked the court to review the District Court's first-instance ruling on former President Yoon's "Myung Tae-gyun polling suspicion" and requested that Kim's sentencing date also be postponed by more than one month.
From June 2021 to March 2022, former President Yoon and Kim were indicted and tried separately on charges of having received at no cost a total of 58 polls worth 270 million won from political broker Myung Tae-gyun.
Kim was acquitted on the charges at the first and second instances, and the Supreme Court's ruling was pending. Earlier, the first- and second-instance courts found that because Myung provided polls not only to the Yoon couple but also to others, the couple could not be deemed to have gained a property benefit equivalent to the poll expense.
However, the Seoul Central District Court's Criminal Agreement Division 33 (chief judge Lee Jin-gwan), which heard former President Yoon's case, on the 13th found him guilty for receiving 14 polls for free and sentenced him to two years in prison.
At the time, the court recognized a "sequential and implicit agreement of intent" among former President Yoon, his spouse, and Myung, and, on the premise that Kim also constituted a joint principal offender with former President Yoon, rendered a guilty verdict against Yoon. On the same charges, the couple received conflicting judgments of guilt and innocence.
In response, the special counsel said, "There is concern that the rulings in this case and the separate case may conflict or be inconsistent," arguing that "a thorough review and sufficient deliberation on the related ruling are necessary before sentencing in this case."
With the Supreme Court ultimately delaying the sentencing by a week, it appears to have accepted the special counsel team's request.