The special counsel team investigating the death of a Marine in the line of duty has appealed a lower court ruling that acquitted former President Yoon Suk-yeol and others charged over the appointment of former Defense Minister Lee Jong-sup as ambassador to Australia and his subsequent departure from the country.
The team said on the 17th that it had filed a notice of appeal with the Seoul Central District Court over the first-instance ruling in what has been dubbed the ambassador-to-Australia harboring case.
Yoon was sent to trial on charges including appointing Lee as ambassador to Australia in order to help him flee, at a time when Lee had been named a suspect in an investigation into alleged interference in the probe of the 2023 death of Marine Corporal Chae. Also indicted were Cho Tae-yong, former director of the National Intelligence Service and then national security adviser; Park Sung-jae, former justice minister; Chang Ho-jin, former first vice foreign minister; Lee Si-won, former presidential secretary for public service discipline; and Shim Woo-jung, former prosecutor general and then vice justice minister.
The trial court acquitted them, ruling that it was difficult to conclude Yoon had regarded Lee at the time as an offender who needed to be helped to escape, and that Lee's posting to Australia could not readily be viewed as flight in the ordinary sense of the word.
"The trial court denied that the defendants had intent to harbor an offender or that they acted in concert," the special counsel team said in explaining its grounds for appeal. "It appears to have missed the essence of the case as a whole by failing to give sufficient consideration to the particular relationships involved and instead assessing separately whether each individual act amounted to the ordinary performance of official duties." The team argues that whether the crime of harboring an offender was committed should be judged against the broader context in which the presidential office and senior government officials were systematically involved in Lee's appointment and departure.
"With the aim of blocking an investigation into the president, core institutions of state power, including the president himself, were systematically mobilized to appoint a key suspect as head of an overseas mission and help him flee, neutralizing the workings of criminal justice," the team said. "The matter is very grave and the offense egregious, and we will do our utmost to maintain the prosecution on appeal."
