Yang Kyung-sook Gets Five-Year Sentence Finalized for 3.3 Billion-Won Fraud Promising to Send Masks to North Korea with Taedonggang Beer Proceeds

[Financial News] Yang Kyung-sook, who defrauded investors of 3.3 billion won by claiming she would bring Taedonggang Beer from North Korea, use the sales proceeds to buy masks and send them to North Korea, has received a finalized five-year prison sentence.
According to legal sources on the 2nd, the First Petty Bench of the Supreme Court of Korea, presided over by Justice Seo Kyung-hwan, recently upheld the lower court's five-year prison sentence in Yang's final appeal. She had been indicted on charges including fraud under the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Economic Crimes.
Yang was accused of defrauding seven people of a total of 3.3 billion won from December 2020 to March 2022 by persuading them to invest in the Jangmadang Project, an event supporting North Korean residents, during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Yang said she would bring Taedonggang Beer from North Korea, use the sales proceeds to purchase masks and send them to North Korea, and guarantee a minimum profit of 2 billion won, or 200 won per mask. She also claimed that the project had been approved by the Ministry of Unification (MOU). However, the support project for North Korean residents did not actually exist. Investigators found that Yang used the investment money to repay other investors, pay credit card bills and purchase cryptocurrency.
The trial court found Yang guilty, ruling that it was difficult to regard the project as a genuine business, and sentenced her to six years in prison. The court criticized her, saying, "Although she had twice previously received prison sentences for fraud and other offenses, she committed another similar crime using comparable methods, including boasting of her connections with political figures and media personnel." It added, "After the investigation began, she fled abroad and was arrested in China as an illegal resident, while most of the damage has yet to be recovered."
The appellate court upheld the guilty verdict but reduced the sentence to five years after taking into account that Yang had reached settlements with some victims. The Supreme Court of Korea accepted the appellate court's ruling, stating, "There was no error in the lower court's judgment that violated logic or rules of experience and exceeded the limits of the principle of free evaluation of evidence."
Yang received a finalized three-year prison sentence in 2013 for accepting money in exchange for promising to secure a proportional-representation nomination from the former Democratic Party of Korea. In 2015, she received a finalized two-year prison sentence for forging private documents. In 2016, she was given a finalized six-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, for violating the Public Official Election Act.
[email protected] Kim Dong-gyu Reporter