Oh Se-hoon Case With Reversed Guilty Verdict Heads to Supreme Court
Attention is focused on how the case involving Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon, whose verdict was reversed between the first and second trials, will ultimately be resolved as it moves up to the Supreme Court. That is because the final outcome of the case will be determined by the Supreme Court's judgment. The case over allegations that Mayor Oh had opinion poll costs illegally paid by Myung Tae-kyun has gone to the Supreme Court. The move came after the office of Special Prosecutor Min Joong-ki announced its intent to appeal on the 23rd, pushing back against the Seoul High Court's not-guilty verdict in the appellate trial.
The case produced exactly opposite outcomes in the first and second trials. On July 22, the Seoul Central District Court convicted Mayor Oh, ruling that 21 million won paid by his sponsor Kim Han-jung for five of the ten opinion polls conducted by Myung Tae-kyun constituted illegal political funds. However, the appellate court reversed the course of the case, acquitting both Oh and former Seoul Deputy Mayor for Political Affairs Kang Chul-won and Kim Han-jung, who had been indicted alongside him.
The special counsel decided to appeal because it disputes the appellate court's handling of evidence. The second trial found it difficult to credit the testimony of Myung Tae-kyun—the only direct evidence in the case—and rejected the evidence accepted at the first trial. The special counsel countered that its investigation did not rely solely on Myung's statements.
The special counsel laid out its argument by going through, point by point, the evidence dismissed at the appellate trial. First is a memo written by an Oh Se-hoon campaign staffer stating that "all hell broke loose because the results of the polls the campaign commissioned were bad." The first trial accepted it on the grounds that it revealed details an outsider could hardly know. The special counsel also noted that a record of conversations showing that Kim Han-jung first met Myung at the campaign's urging was another key piece of evidence.
The special counsel also objected to the appellate court's admission of the so-called "March 6" transcript as new evidence. It argued that Kim Han-jung withheld the audio file at the first trial and submitted only the portions favorable to himself at the second trial, and that it therefore should not have been admitted as evidence.
With the special counsel making its intent to appeal clear, every case stemming from the so-called "Myung Tae-kyun gate," in which former President Yoon Suk-yeol, Kim Keon-hee, and Mayor Oh Se-hoon were indicted, will now be judged by the Supreme Court.
