The first trial court in former President Yoon Suk-yeol's Public Official Election Act violation case appears to have applied two Supreme Court en banc rulings related to President Lee Jae-myung differently. While it used the legal reasoning from the ruling that remanded Lee's case with instructions consistent with a guilty finding as a basis to find Yoon guilty, it declined to apply the ruling that acquitted Lee, saying the facts were different.
According to legal sources on the 29th, the Seoul Central District Court's Criminal Division 21 (Presiding Judge Cho Soon-pyo) cited the Supreme Court en banc ruling 2025Do4697, handed down in May last year, five times in the written judgment in Yoon's case.
That ruling concerned statements by President Lee about the late Kim Moon-gi, former head of Development Department 1 at Seongnam Development Corporation, finding that portions related to the alleged golf outing together and the Baekhyeon-dong development were false statements of fact, and remanding the case with instructions consistent with a guilty finding.
At the time, the Supreme Court said that when determining whether an expression constitutes the publication of a false fact, the overall purport of the remarks, their objective content, the ordinary meaning of the words used, and the way the phrases are connected should be considered in a comprehensive manner, and the determination should be based on the overall impression given to ordinary voters.
It also said that, when fixing the meaning of a statement, rather than meticulously analyzing the relationship among individual expressions after the fact, the court should examine how ordinary voters would have understood it based on the circumstances at the time and the overall context. It held that courts should also consider whether the parts that diverge from the facts are important enough to mislead voters' accurate judgment about the candidate's fitness for public office.
The court in Yoon's case interpreted Yoon's statements based on this legal principle. It found that the remarks denying any introduction of a lawyer to former Yongsan Tax Office chief Yoon Woo-jin and denying ever meeting Jeon Seong-bae, known as Geonjin, together with first lady Kim Keon-hee constituted false facts when judged by the overall impression they would give to ordinary voters.
Yoon's side cited the Supreme Court's en banc ruling from July 2020 that acquitted President Lee as the basis for its claim of innocence.
The Supreme Court en banc ruling 2019Do13328 concerned President Lee's remarks at a 2018 local election candidate debate to the effect that he had not tried to have his older brother forcibly admitted to a psychiatric hospital.
The Supreme Court found that, absent special circumstances showing that a candidate, in the course of answering questions or making claims and rebuttals at a debate, actively made the statement with the unilateral intention to expose and disseminate false facts regardless of the debate's topic or context, the crime of publishing false facts cannot be applied.
Yoon's side argued that the statements at issue also came in the course of answering questions from the press, and thus the same legal principle should apply.
However, the first trial court found that "the legal principle of that ruling does not apply to this case as is."
The court said, "The legal principle in that Supreme Court ruling concerns statements made during the course of debate at a debate forum for election candidates, which presupposes a situation where opportunities to participate, the order of speaking, and speaking times are set so balance among candidates is ensured, and the exchanges occur spontaneously and continuously within limited time, making it inevitable that the clarity of expressions may be limited."
It continued, "The Kwanhun Club invitational debate at which Yoon Suk-yeol's remarks about a lawyer were made may be titled a 'debate,' but only Yoon Suk-yeol was invited as a candidate, and it was in a format of answering questions from panelists," adding, "The interview in which the remarks about Geonjin were made was not a candidate debate to begin with."
In the end, while recognizing the common principle in the two en banc rulings that the overall context of the remarks should be emphasized, the court determined that a formal debate where spontaneous exchanges among candidates occur differs in nature from a solo invitational forum or a media interview.
Still, there is criticism that the standards of "overall impression" and "the perspective of ordinary voters" are abstract. At the time of the en banc ruling last May, Supreme Court justices Lee Heung-gu and Oh Kyung-mi issued dissenting opinions to the effect that statements that can be interpreted in multiple ways should be judged in favor of the defendant.
As former President Yoon has appealed the first-instance ruling, the scope of application of the two Supreme Court precedents and the legal nature of the Kwanhun Club invitational forum are expected to be key issues on appeal.