SEOUL: Former President Yoon Suk Yeol was sentenced to two years in prison Monday for accepting free political polling services during his presidential campaign.
The Seoul Central District Court found him guilty of violating the Political Funds Act, recognizing 14 surveys worth 27.92 million won ($18,600) provided by political broker Myung Tae-kyun.
The court also ruled that Yoon had promised to help secure the ruling party’s nomination of former lawmaker Kim Young-sun in return.
“Opinion polls can influence voters’ decisions, and their credibility forms an important foundation of democracy,” presiding Judge Lee Jin-gwan said.
“When a political actor receives contributions in a manner not prescribed by the Political Funds Act, and a polling agency provides survey results in return, it risks distorting public opinion and undermining the fairness of the election as a whole.”
Prosecutors had charged Yoon with conspiring with his wife, former first lady Kim Keon Hee, to receive 58 free surveys worth more than 270 million won from Myung between June 2021 and March 2022.
The court, however, found sufficient evidence to convict Yoon for 14 of the surveys and calculated the financial benefit obtained from them at 27.92 million won.
It found that Kim had authorized Myung to determine the timing, content, method and publication status of the polls, and that Yoon had been informed of the arrangement and implicitly consented to it.
The court said this amounted to a successive and tacit agreement among Yoon, Kim and Myung over the provision of the polling services.
It also found that Yoon promised Myung that Kim Young-sun would receive the People Power Party’s nomination in return for the surveys and later exerted influence over the party’s nomination process through Chang Je-won, then chief of staff to the president-elect.
The court said, however, that proving the quid pro quo was not required to establish a violation of the Political Funds Act.
Myung was sentenced to 18 months in prison and taken into custody in the courtroom.
Monday’s ruling differed from the lower court rulings in Kim Keon Hee’s separate case involving the same polling services. She was acquitted at both the trial and appellate levels of a related Political Funds Act charge.
“The allegations concerning the opinion polls provided by Myung in Kim’s case and those in Yoon’s case cannot be regarded as identical,” Lee said.
In Kim’s case, the lower courts found that prosecutors had failed to prove she received a financial benefit equivalent to the cost of the surveys or that the polling services were provided in return for Kim Young-sun’s nomination.
The Supreme Court is scheduled to deliver its final ruling in Kim’s case Thursday.
