Lim Woo-jae, a former adviser at Samsung Electro-Mechanics and the ex-husband of Hotel Shilla President Lee Boo-jin, has received a final suspended prison sentence for his role in a case involving the confinement and assault of a woman in her 80s.
The Supreme Court's third division, with Justice Lee Sook-yeon as the presiding judge, on the 15th dismissed Lim's appeal and upheld a lower court ruling that sentenced him to one year in prison, suspended for two years, on charges including aggravated unlawful confinement resulting in injury, legal sources said on the 21st. A shaman surnamed A and the victim's grandson, surnamed B, who were indicted alongside him, received final sentences of five years and two years and four months in prison, respectively.
The case began in April last year in Yeoncheon County, Gyeonggi Province. The shaman, who was in conflict with the victim's son, used the grandson and others to confine the woman at her home and to monitor and assault her as a way of pressuring the son, prosecutors said.
The grandson committed the crime while under the shaman's psychological control. After the woman managed to escape and reported the case to police, the shaman drew in the victim's granddaughter and staged a fake suicide scene to obstruct the investigation. During the search, security camera footage captured the shaman driving away with the granddaughter alongside a romantic partner, who was later identified as Lim.
The trial court found Lim a co-principal in the shaman's charge of obstructing official duties by deception, sentenced him to one year in prison and ordered him detained in court. The appellate court, however, reduced the sentence to a suspended term, holding him liable only for aiding and abetting, citing factors including that he took part passively and gained no direct benefit from the crime. The Supreme Court upheld that judgment.
Lim married Lee in 1999 but divorced her after legal proceedings that lasted five years and three months from 2014.
