Justice Ministry says former Vice Governor Lee Hwa-young never applied for parole... Ruling and opposition camps clash
After the attorney for Lee Hwa-young, former Gyeonggi Province vice governor for peace affairs, claimed that Lee had sought parole (a system allowing release before completing one's sentence) through various channels to the presidential office and was deeply angered by President Lee Jae-myung, the ruling and opposition camps traded sharply differing reactions on the 8th.
The People Power Party pressed the parole allegations at the National Assembly's Legislation and Judiciary Committee that day. Floor leader Jeong Jeong-sik described the situation as a "prisoner's dilemma" in which the two men must weigh cooperation against betrayal.
Sung Chi-hoon, former deputy spokesperson of the Democratic Party of Korea, pushed back, calling the "prisoner's dilemma" remark excessive rhetoric designed to frame the president as if he had been established as an accomplice. He said he honestly could not understand why attorney Kim Kwang-min made those remarks. According to him, the former vice governor had a prison term of 7 years and 8 months finalized by the Supreme Court and still faces undecided trials, making parole impossible. The former deputy spokesperson explained that former Democracy Research Institute vice chief Kim Yong and former secretary Jung Jin-sang were fundamentally different cases, as they were released on bail because their trials could not be concluded within their detention periods.
The Justice Ministry also drew a line. Acting Justice Minister Jin Soo-jin testified at the National Assembly audit that day that the former vice governor had not met the basic requirement for parole—serving at least one-third of each fixed-term prison sentence—and had never applied for parole.
On the 8th, the former vice governor released a two-page handwritten statement prepared at Suwon Detention Center through her attorney, saying that some of the attorney's remarks "differ from her true intentions." In the statement, she claimed the cash-for-summit scandal to North Korea was fabricated by the prosecution and that the courts completed that fabrication, writing that she "empathizes with the president's anguish over suffering under fabricated accusations."
