SEOUL, A senior prosecutor indicted for conspiring in 2020 with a then opposition lawmaker to have complaints filed against then ruling camp figures was sentenced to one year in prison by a court Wednesday.
The Seoul Central District Court handed out the prison term to Son Jun-sung, deputy chief prosecutor of the Daegu High Prosecutors Office, after finding him guilty of leaking official secrets and violating the personal information protection law.
Son, who formerly served as an aide to then Prosecutor General Yoon Suk Yeol, was indicted in mid-2022 on charges of secretly asking People Power Party Rep. Kim Woong, just before the general elections in April 2020, to file complaints against three pro-government figures for their alleged involvement in negative news reports about Yoon’s wife.
The indictment of Son was filed by the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO), an anti-corruption investigation agency launched in January 2021. Son’s case marks the first guilty verdict among
cases directly prosecuted by the CIO.
The court said it can be acknowledged that Son, then as an investigative information policy officer at the Supreme Prosecutors Office, was involved in writing and reviewing written complaints delivered to Kim and thus violated the political neutrality required of prosecutors.
In the preceding trial, the CIO requested a three-year term for Son on the charge of violating the election law and an additional two years in prison on other charges, including a leak of official secrets and a violation of the personal information protection law.
Son has been suspended from duty since being impeached by the National Assembly last month. He vowed to appeal after the court ruling.
Source: Yonhap News Agency