Former Supreme Court Chief Justice Yang Sung-tae (centre) arrives at the Seoul High Court on Friday ahead of his sentencing. - Photo: Yonhap
SEOUL: The Seoul High Court on Friday (Jan 30) sentenced former Supreme Court Chief Justice Yang Sung-tae to six months in prison, suspended for a year, for abusing his power to intervene in a series of high-profile court cases.
Partially overturning a lower court's acquittal of the same charges in 2024, the appellate court found Yang guilty of two abuse of authority charges.
The former involves him blocking a decision by the Seoul Southern District Court to request a constitutional review of the Supreme Court's interpretation of provisions concerning the calculation of service periods under the Private School Teachers' Pension Act.
Prosecutors alleged Yang feared that such a review would undermine the Supreme Court's authority and that he pressured the Seoul Southern District Court to withdraw the request.
The court said Yang was also involved in influencing a 2015 appellate ruling in an administrative case filed by five former Unified Progressive Party legislators to confirm their parliamentary status following the party's dissolution in 2013.
According to the ruling, Yang and his accomplices drafted a report reflecting the National Court Administration's position on the lower court's decision and asked appellate court judges to review it beforehand.
Speaking to reporters after Friday's ruling, Lee Sang-won, Yang's attorney, said they would appeal the case and expected to win acquittal in the Supreme Court.
Acquitted charges
The appellate court upheld the lower court's acquittal on 45 other charges.
Yang had been accused of meddling in a series of high-profile cases between 2011 and 2017 with the aim of pushing through the long-sought introduction of an exclusive appellate court system, a major institutional priority of his tenure.
The prosecutors claimed that Yang had conducted illegal lobbying of the executive and legislative branches, monitored and pressured legal circles opposed to the plan, sidelined internal critics from key posts and even engaged in "trial-for-policy" deals with the presidential office.
Other cases in which he was alleged to have illegally intervened included lawsuits related to Japanese forced labour during World War II, the notification revoking the Korean Teachers and Education Workers' Union's legal status, the National Intelligence Service's interference in the 2012 presidential election and administrative litigation involving the Unified Progressive Party.
Additional charges accused Yang of collecting internal information from the Constitutional Court through judges he had installed, using 350 million won ($243,000) from the court spokesperson office's budget as incentive payments for court presidents, as well as classifying judges critical of court administration as "problematic judges" and subjecting them to personnel disadvantages.
Investigation and trial of Yang
Yang and two other former Supreme Court justices were indicted in 2019. An arrest warrant was issued for Yang in the same year, making him the first-ever Supreme Court justice to be detained.
In 2024, however, a lower court acquitted all defendants, ruling that Yang did not possess the authority to interfere in individual rulings and that evidence of prior collusion had not been sufficiently established.
The prosecution appealed the verdict, seeking a seven-year prison sentence for Yang and five- and four-year terms, respectively, for his alleged accomplices.
In the judiciary's initial internal fact-finding process in 2017 and 2018, the scope of the allegations was narrowed to "abuse of judicial administrative power," premised on the assumption that trial-for-policy bargaining had not occurred.
Subsequent prosecutorial investigations, however, reportedly uncovered indications that such deals may have taken place, leading media outlets to increasingly describe the scandal as "judicial corruption."
The controversy escalated in May 2018, when then–Chief Justice Kim Myung-soo issued a public apology and pledged cooperation with prosecutors, triggering the unprecedented investigation of sitting and former judges, including senior figures within the judiciary. - The Korea Herald/ANN
