Prison Term Upheld on Appeal in Seoul Western District Court Rampage Case, Citing Little Remorse for Assaulting Reporters

[The Financial News] Appellate rulings have diverged for defendants who received prison sentences for assaulting reporters or breaking into the court during the rampage at the Seoul Western District Court. The prison term for the defendant in the reporter assault case was upheld, while the defendant charged with trespassing into the court and damaging facilities had his sentence partially reduced.
Criminal Appeals Division 3-2 of the Seoul Western District Court, presided over by Judge Jung Sung-kyun, on the morning of the 2nd rejected the appeal of a 45-year-old man surnamed Yoo, who had been indicted on charges including aggravated injury, and upheld the lower court’s sentence of one year in prison. The court also dismissed the prosecution’s appeal.
The bench stated, "Although Yoo has no prior criminal record involving penalties more severe than a fine, it is difficult to conclude that he has shown genuine remorse up to this point."
For a 41-year-old man surnamed Je, who was tried alongside Yoo on the same charges, the court overturned the original sentence of 10 months in prison and instead imposed a 10‐month prison term suspended for two years. It also ordered him to complete 80 hours of community service.
The court explained, "Although it is hard to rate his level of remorse as particularly high, we took into account that, at the appellate stage, he reached settlements with the victims and deposited tens of millions of won with the court."
According to prosecutors, on January 18 last year, during a pretrial detention hearing for former President Yoon Suk Yeol, the defendants surrounded a reporter who was covering the event near the Seoul Western District Court, assaulted or threatened him with their fists and feet, and forced him to delete audio files by seizing a camera battery and memory card. During this process, Yoo allegedly swung a light baton and threatened, saying, "If you don’t want your camera smashed, take out the memory card." One of the victims suffered injuries to the face and eye area that required two to three weeks of treatment.
Earlier the same day, Criminal Appeals Division 3-1 of the Seoul Western District Court, presided over by Judge Ban Jung-woo, overturned a lower court ruling that had sentenced a 36-year-old man surnamed Lee to three years and six months in prison on charges including special trespass into a building, and instead sentenced him to two years and 10 months in prison.
Lee was accused of entering the interior of the Seoul Western District Court through a rear gate in the early hours of January 19 last year, damaging an entry gate, smashing the glass of the duty office with a police shield, and pouring water on a closed-circuit (CCTV) storage device to destroy it. The court also found that he entered the first-floor duty office, proceeded into the lobby, and then reentered the court grounds.
The court rejected both the defense claim that the process of obtaining YouTube video footage was unlawful and the argument that he had not exercised the intimidating force of a crowd. The bench held, "The investigative authorities’ act of downloading publicly available video does not constitute a compulsory measure," and added, "By joining a situation involving the collective force of a crowd and amplifying it, he effectively exercised real intimidating power."
However, the court noted grounds for mitigation, stating, "The defendant is a first-time offender, and we comprehensively considered factors such as his depositing 9.5 million won with the Republic of Korea (ROK) at the appellate stage."
425_sama@fnnews.com Choi Seung-han Reporter