Court postpones hearing of DP candidate’s retrial until after presidential vote

The Seoul High Court on Wednesday postponed the first hearing of Democratic Party (DP) presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung’s retrial on election law violation charges until after the June 3 presidential election, citing the need to guarantee his right to a fair trial.

The court said it postponed the hearing from May 15 to June 18 “in order to guarantee a fair electioneering opportunity to the defendant, who is a presidential candidate, and eliminate controversies about the fairness of the trial.”

The court added that it has “maintained and will continue to maintain the position of conducting trials in an independent and fair manner only in accordance with the Constitution and the law, without any internal or external influence or interference.”

The decision is a win for Lee, who faced the prospect of his not guilty verdict being overturned after the Supreme Court remanded his case to the Seoul High Court last week, citing misunderstandings of legal principles in its decision to acquit him of a lower court’s sentence of one year in prison, suspended for two years.

The sentence, if finalized, would bar Lee from running in the June presidential election.

“I think the court made the right decision that it naturally should have in line with the spirit of the Constitution,” Lee told reporters during a campaign stop in the southwestern city of Jeonju.

During the initial trial, the DP candidate was found guilty of lying during a media interview in December 2021 that he did not play golf with the late Kim Moon-ki, a former executive of Seongnam Development Corp., which was behind a corruption-ridden development project in Seongnam, south of Seoul, when Lee was the city’s mayor.

Lee was also found guilty of lying during a parliamentary audit of the Gyeonggi provincial government in October 2021 that he was under pressure from the land ministry to rezone the former site of the Korea Food Research Institute in Seongnam.

The appellate court acquitted him of the charges in March, but the Supreme Court sent the case back to the court last week, inviting strong protest from the DP.

Lee’s lawyer filed an application with the Seoul High Court earlier Wednesday to request the first hearing’s postponement, citing articles in the Constitution and the law that guarantee a candidate’s fair electioneering opportunity and ban a candidate’s arrest during the campaign period.

In a separate move, the Seoul Central District Court on Wednesday also delayed the start of Lee’s high-profile corruption trial related to development projects in Seongnam. The court pushed back the first hearing to June 24, from the originally scheduled dates of May 13 and 27, responding to a similar request from Lee’s legal team.

Lee’s lawyers also sought a delay in another case involving charges of suborning a former mayoral secretary to make false court testimony in his favor. The appellate trial for that case is scheduled to begin May 20 at the Seoul High Court.