Special prosecutors appeal acquittal in Myung Tae-kyun free polling case

The special prosecution team led by Min Joong-ki filed an appeal to the Supreme Court on the 13th, contesting the appellate court's not-guilty verdict for former President Yoon Suk Yeol, who was charged with receiving free opinion polls from Myung Tae-kyun.

On the 7th, the Seoul High Court's Criminal Division 7 (Presiding Judge Koo Hoe-geun) found that allegations that former President Yoon, in collusion with Kim Keon-hee, received 58 opinion polls worth a total of about 270 million won from Myung Tae-kyun free of charge from June 2021 to March 2022 had not been proven. This reversed the first-instance ruling, which had partially found the charges proven, finding that there had been a sequential and implicit meeting of minds between the couple and Myung.

The court noted that Myung could not be seen as having provided a property benefit equivalent to the cost of the opinion polls, and that the essence of the benefit was political advice, with the polls presented merely as supporting evidence. It concluded that no political fund donation—a prerequisite being the provision of a property benefit—had taken place either.

The court went further, ruling that there was no meeting of minds between Myung and the couple regarding conducting the opinion polls or providing them for free. It found that even assuming a meeting of minds existed between Kim Keon-hee and Myung, collusion with former President Yoon had not been proven.