On April 9, Lee Jae-myung stepped down from his role as the chief of the opposition Democratic Party (DP) to run for presidency in the June snap election. Since the Constitutional Court formally ousted Yoon Suk-yeol as president on April 4, Lee has been the runaway favorite to win election as Yoon’s replacement.
Lee’s approval ratings as a presidential candidate hover around 50 percent, largely coinciding with the share of South Koreans that favor the DP to lead the next administration. Upon the announcement of his candidacy, people were already hailing him as the president. His remarks and campaign policies were jotted down as upcoming government plans.
But his camp’s buoyancy deflated somewhat on May 1. Lee was exchanging bonhomie and bandying policy ideas with the labor sector reps when a staff member handed him a phone. They wanted him to read the Supreme Court’s ruling in a case where Lee was charged with allegedly publicizing false information.
Lee hoisted up his glasses to look into the phone. He appeared in disbelief, coming back to the phone for a second look. The Supreme Court had overturned the appeal court’s not-guilty verdict, remanding the case for a guilty verdict.
Lee forced a wan smile and muttered, “It’s all right.”
But for South Korea’s democracy, it isn’t all right. Lee’s sentencing remains uncertain, and is of crucial import: sentences of a fine of over 1 million Korean won or a prison term would bar him from running for public office for the next five years. That was the case after his initial conviction in late 2024, but the appeals court acquitted Lee in March, seemingly clearing the way for him to run for the presidency.
Now the candidate seen as a shoo-in to win the June 3 election could be prevented from competing by a last-minute judicial intervention.
The Supreme Court’s unprecedented legal reasoning, which contravened its own case law, and its procedural irregularity have engendered a whirlwind of charged reactions, with the country’s top court accused of harboring a political vendetta against Lee and meddling in the snap election.
The Supreme Court found that remarks made by Lee in late 2021 while he was campaigning for the 2022 presidential election violated the Public Official Election Act. The act makes it a crime to publicize false information in an attempt to win an election. The charge arose out of a couple of replies to questions regarding Lee’s alleged implication in shady property development schemes during his tenure as a mayor of a suburban town south of Seoul.
Lee’s detractors circulated a group photo, which included Lee and the organizer of a controversial property development plan, alleging they were friends and Lee unduly helped progress land development in his city. Lee countered that the photo was being circulated “as if I played golf” on a business trip and that the photo was cropped to show a smaller group of men. The prosecutors argued, and the Supreme Court agreed, that Lee misled voters by lying that he didn’t play golf with the organizer.
From the context, however, Lee was merely clarifying that the photo was cropped to show a smaller group of men as if he played golf just with them, with the intent to exaggerate the extent of their mutual acquaintance. In its ruling overturning Lee’s conviction, the appellate court rebuked the prosecutors, saying that tailoring their interpretation to fit the indictment risks vitiating the freedom of political expression and campaigning.
Yet, the Supreme Court, in overturning the appeal ruling, even padded Lee’s remark as having denied “associating” with the organizer, when in fact he mentioned nothing to the effect. This practice was in stark contrast to its own precedent last year that warned against stretching the literal bounds of remarks to satisfy a particular retrospective inference by investigators.
The other remark that landed Lee in trouble was when he said that “threats” from the Land Ministry forced him to change the planning permission for a plot of land for development. The Supreme Court sided with the prosecutors that this amounted to spreading false information since managing land use was up to his town’s discretion, not the Land Ministry. But, in fact, the Park Guen-hye administration at the time did pressure Lee’s town to change the planning permission for a few plots. Given the bigger picture, the appellate court ruled earlier that Lee’s mention of “threats” was more of an exaggeration and his own abstract perception of the pressure than flat-out false information.
The Supreme Court’s ruling against Lee erased its recent case law, which had been paving the way for politicians’ freedom to exercise their campaigning rights without being unduly daunted by the possibility of facing legal punishment for their expression.
The court also exhibited a worrisome procedural irregularity in the ruling. Supreme Court cases usually last a few months. In Lee’s case, it took just one month. It also violated its own internal regulations on deliberation procedures for cases heard en banc – presided by all the justices, rather than by a select panel – to expedite the ruling. It then live broadcast the ruling, as if to shame Lee as a convicted criminal in front of millions of voters.
All of the 10 Supreme Court justices who ruled against Lee were appointed by Yoon.
Public trust in the South Korean judiciary has cratered. It has been no secret that prosecutors are experts at political stitch-ups. As the petty and nitpicking nature of the legal points in dispute suggests, the prosecutor’s office, controlled by Yoon, a former top prosecutor, has bent over backwards to pursue this charge against Lee. But the nation is in tumult as the judiciary collaborated with prosecutors in an attempt to deprive the voters of their fundamental right to elect their preferred candidate.
Two issues are at stake. The first is South Korea’s democracy. Democracy requires participation in politics by all. The people are supposed to decide the fate of elected officials. They should be judging for themselves who should get their vote. When justices take it upon themselves to disqualify a candidate on questionable grounds, this doesn’t just undermine the perceived legitimacy of the next election. It also amounts to an assault on democracy itself.
The second issue is the judiciary’s political neutrality and independence. The remarks that landed Lee in legal trouble arose amid political mudslinging. The Supreme Court plunged straight into the political grey area to render and impose a verdict on a candidate and the people, so close to such an important election. This hurts the fairness of election campaigning by constricting what was meant to be a free and neutral arena of political discourse and perception.
All indications are that the Supreme Court deliberately timed its ruling to influence the snap election. Compare this to what happened to U.S. President Donald Trump in January, when the New York court decided not to punish him for felon convictions in order to ensure the American voters had a final say over his fate. This was a valuable lesson in judicial restraint, which the South Korean Supreme Court failed to observe.
Now the court can’t avoid public censure for its partisanship. Its ruling reinforced the notion that the judiciary and the prosecutor’s office are ruled by a self-dealing elite, which is using its control of legal institutions to keep Lee out of power at all costs.
Still, Lee may not be officially barred before the snap election. It will take time for the Seoul High Court to hand down its sentence, and Lee could appeal yet again to the Supreme Court.
Given the high court’s alacrity in processing Lee’s case and the more than likely chance of the Supreme Court foregoing necessary legal procedures yet again, however, there’s also a possibility that Lee may indeed be formally barred from office before June 3.
If there’s one thing that this whole legal commotion has taught South Koreans, it’s that those who came into their current power thanks to Yoon are making a desperate last attempt to avoid having Lee bring them to justice.