Former South Korean President Indicted for Bribery
Former South Korean President Moon Jae-in was indicted on bribery charges on Thursday.
The move by prosecutors makes him the latest in a growing list of former leaders of the East Asian nation to find themselves in legal hot water.
This case is linked to the appointment of his then son-in-law to a lucrative no-show job at a budget Thai airline during his term of office.
Prosecutors had been investigating whether Lee’s appointment as the head of the SMEs and Startups Agency was in exchange for Moon’s former son-in-law getting a job and receiving a salary plus living expenses at Thai Eastar Jet between 2018 and 2020, the statement outlined.
The prosecution alleges that the money the former son-in-law received as an executive director, 5.95 million baht ($177,506), was irregular and constituted a bribe to Moon, who was then the president.
Prosecutors said the son-in-law spent only brief periods of time at the company’s office in Thailand and performed minor duties during a period he claimed to be working remotely from South Korea.
The prosecutors’ office said it had not found evidence that Moon directly performed political favors for Lee but said that Lee, who worked on Moon’s campaign, likely expected his assistance to be repaid.
Prosecutors cited previous bribery cases involving former Presidents Park Geun-hye and Lee Myung-bak, both of whom were convicted and jailed, as legal precedent.
Moon, Lee, and their legal representatives have yet to comment, but Moon’s allies in the main liberal opposition Democratic Party criticized the indictment, calling it a politically motivated attempt by supporters of his successor, Yoon Suk Yeol, at the prosecution service to humiliate the former liberal leader ahead of the upcoming snap election.
South Koreans are heading to the polls in June after Yoon was ousted over attempting to impose martial law in December.
The former top prosecutor now stands accused of rebellion and insurrection, charges he denies.
A Democratic Party committee separately warned it would hold the prosecution service to account for its indictment.
The liberal-leaning Lee Jae-myung from Moon’s Democratic Party is the current frontrunner in opinion polls, and his campaign called the indictment political retribution by the prosecution and a clampdown on the previous administration.
Moon, a liberal lawyer and a civil rights activist, was president between 2017 and 2022.
He is known for his push to reconcile with North Korea, meeting with Kim Jong Un three times, and facilitating the start of diplomacy between Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump during his first term in the White House.
Moon’s supporters credit him with achieving the now-stalled cooperation with North Korea and avoiding major armed clashes with the regime in Pyongyang.
However, his opponents accused him of being a naive North Korean sympathizer who ended up helping Kim buy time to advance his nuclear program in the face of international sanctions.
Over the past two decades, a string of South Korean leaders have faced trials or scandals for the most part toward the end of their terms or after leaving office.
In 2017, Park Geun-hye, the country’s first female president, was ousted and arrested over a corruption scandal. She was tried, convicted, and sentenced to 20 years in prison before she received a presidential pardon from Moon.
Park’s conservative predecessor, Lee Myung-bak, was also arrested on a range of crimes, years after leaving office, while Moon’s friend and former liberal President Roh Moo-hyun jumped to his death in 2009 amid a corruption investigation.
