Former Saha District Mayor Lee Gap-jun Fined 5 Million Won for Requesting Support in Legislative Election

[Financial News] Former Saha District Mayor Lee Gap-jun was fined 5 million won for asking voters to support a candidate from his own party ahead of the 2024 South Korean legislative election. He was found guilty of campaigning while serving as a public official, but the allegation that he used his position as district mayor was rejected, reducing his sentence from imprisonment to a fine.
According to legal sources on the 3rd, the Supreme Court of Korea's First Division, with Justice Suh Kyeong-hwan as the presiding justice, upheld the lower court's ruling that sentenced former Mayor Lee to a fine of 5 million won. The prosecution appealed, but the Supreme Court of Korea dismissed the appeal.
The court ruled, "The lower court did not violate the rules of logic and experience, exceed the limits of the principle of free evaluation of evidence, or misinterpret the law concerning the establishment of a violation of the Public Official Election Act through campaigning by using one's position as a public official."
On February 24, 2024, former Mayor Lee met Lee Seong-gwon, then a People Power Party primary candidate for Saha-gu's Gap constituency, at the Dadaepo Daljip Cultural Festival organized by the Youth Association, a youth volunteer group in Saha-gu. He then called A, an executive of the Youth Association, and asked the group to support Lee Seong-gwon. Investigators found that he subsequently handed his mobile phone to Lee Seong-gwon so that the candidate could directly ask for support. The same method was repeated on March 20 that year in the mayor's office at the Saha District Office, Busan. After completing a policy proposal handover ceremony with Lee Seong-gwon, former Mayor Lee called A to request support and again handed over his phone. Lee Seong-gwon received the party nomination in February that year and won the April legislative election. He and former Mayor Lee are both from the same hometown and belong to the same party.
The Public Official Election Act prohibits public officials, who are required to maintain political neutrality, from campaigning. It also separately prohibits public officials from campaigning by using their official positions. Prosecutors applied both provisions and indicted former Mayor Lee without detention in October 2024.
The first trial found him guilty on both charges and sentenced him to eight months in prison, suspended for two years. The court cited his position overseeing the formulation and adjustment of subsidy budgets for private organizations, as well as special audits of organizations receiving subsidies. It also noted that the Youth Association, where A was involved, and social welfare foundations operated by A's family depended on subsidies from Saha-gu for most of their total budgets. The court also took into account A's testimony to investigators and at trial: "I thought each of these calls was with the mayor of Saha-gu, not with an acquaintance."
In June, the second trial overturned the first-trial ruling and reduced the sentence to a fine of 5 million won. It upheld the conviction for campaigning while serving as a public official but found insufficient evidence to establish that he had used his official position. The court determined that the request was more strongly characterized as a personal favor based on their personal relationship than as an act using his position, since former Mayor Lee had generally treated A as a junior from his hometown.
The court also assessed A's actual influence differently. It said A was not the chairman of the Youth Association at the time of the incident but merely a director serving in an advisory capacity as the immediate past chairman, making it difficult to conclude that A could actually exert influence over the organization given his health and other circumstances. The court also found that former Mayor Lee was not in a position to directly influence the private organizations operated by A's family based on his authority over budgeting or management and supervision.
An elected public official loses office if convicted with a fine of at least 1 million won for violating election law in another person's election. However, former Mayor Lee completed his term in June and did not run in the June 3 local elections.
[email protected] Kim Dong-gyu Reporter