Appeals Court Cuts Former Special Counsel Park Young-soo’s Bribery Sentence to Six Years
The Seoul High Court reduced former special counsel Park Young-soo’s prison term by one year after narrowing the amount it found he had accepted from a private developer.
The Seoul High Court on Wednesday reduced former special counsel Park Young-soo’s prison sentence on bribery-related charges from seven years to six years, while leaving in place substantial financial penalties.
The appellate court fined Park 200 million won, approximately $150,000, and ordered him to forfeit an additional 200 million won. It found that he had accepted that amount from a private developer as campaign funding while seeking leadership of the Korean Bar Association.
Park was serving as chair of Woori Bank’s board at the time. According to the court’s findings, the developer sought Park’s help in getting the bank to participate in discussions about a consortium connected to the Daejang-dong property development in Seongnam, south of Seoul. The court concluded that the payment and the request were transactional.
The ruling narrowed the amount recognized by the lower court. The first-instance court had sentenced Park to seven years after determining that he accepted 300 million won from the developer. The appeals court found him guilty only in relation to 200 million won, citing inconsistencies in the developer’s account of the remaining amount.
The court also upheld the lower court’s acquittal or dismissal of Park’s other charges. Those included allegations linking him to the so-called “5 billion-won club,” a group of people alleged to have been promised or paid 5 billion won each by Hwacheon Daeyu, an asset management company that invested in the Daejang-dong project.
The Daejang-dong development has generated years of criminal investigations and political controversy over how profits were distributed and whether influential figures received improper benefits. Wednesday’s appellate decision addressed the evidence and sentence in Park’s case rather than the broader set of disputes surrounding the project.
Park became nationally prominent as the special counsel who investigated the corruption scandal involving former President Park Geun-hye in 2017. His later prosecution placed a former high-profile anti-corruption investigator at the center of a bribery case tied to one of South Korea’s most closely watched development scandals.
The reduced sentence reflects the appellate court’s narrower assessment of the proven payment, while its prison term, fine and forfeiture order maintain the core bribery conviction.