Woo Je-chang, a former Democratic Party lawmaker, was given a finalized four-year prison sentence on charges that he took 900 million won from a construction company after saying he would help the firm win a contract for a highway soundproof wall project.
The Supreme Court's Third Division, presided over by Justice Oh Seok-jun, on the 2nd upheld a lower court ruling that sentenced the former lawmaker Woo to four years in prison and ordered him to forfeit 956.61 million won on charges including taking a bribe in connection with mediation under the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Crimes.
Woo was indicted and detained last May on charges that, from Aug. 2021 to March last year, he took 990 million won from the head of a construction firm in connection with a soundproof wall project along the Yeongdong Expressway near the site of a local housing cooperative in Yongin, Gyeonggi.
Since a district unit plan zone was newly designated in Sept. 2017, the site had a plan to install a soundproof wall to reduce noise damage. When the construction costs for the soundproof wall increased to the point that the local housing cooperative could not place the order, Woo demanded money from the head of the construction company, saying he would make it possible to proceed with the project through lawmakers on the Land Infrastructure and Transport Committee, the Minister of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, and executives and employees of the Korea Expressway Corporation (KEC). Woo received money by methods such as selling leftover coffee machines from the company he headed.
In the first trial, Woo was sentenced to three years and six months in prison and ordered to forfeit 888.36 million won. The first-instance court found that part of the coffee machine payment transfers was not sufficiently proven and determined the amount Woo received to be 888.36 million won.
In the second trial, Woo was sentenced to four years in prison and ordered to forfeit 956.61 million won. The appellate court viewed part of the coffee machine payments that the first trial had deemed not guilty as a quid pro quo for influence peddling and found him guilty. The appellate panel said of Woo, "He has offered nothing but implausible excuses and shows no remorse at all."
Woo appealed, but the Supreme Court dismissed the appeal, saying there was no error in the lower court's judgment.
Woo served as a National Assembly member for the Yongin area in the 17th and 18th National Assembly with the Uri Party and the United Democratic Party. In the 2024 general election, he ran as an independent in Yongin-gap but lost.