On the 1st of this month, Lee Jae-myung, leader of the Democratic Party of Korea, submitted a defendant’s statement directly to the court. On November 5th, he attended a continuation trial for the ‘Daejang-dong embezzlement and Seongnam FC bribery’ case held at the Seoul Central District Court in Seocho District.
Ahead of the first instance verdict in his perjury coaching case on the 6th, Lee reiterated his stance on his innocence. He posted on his social media, stating that the prosecution’s charges involved allegedly asking Kim Jin-sung to provide false testimony about an agreement to withdraw an accusation to frame Lee as the main culprit. However, Kim had communicated with his lawyer that no such agreement existed, Lee highlighted.
Lee also questioned how it could be a case of perjury coaching when he neither asked for such testimony nor, hypothetically, if he did ask, the request was not fulfilled, resulting in a “failed coaching.” He criticized the prosecution for hiding the recorded call, suspecting they concealed it because it didn’t support their case.
He submitted a defendant’s statement, spanning 16 pages of A4 paper, to the 33rd Criminal Agreement Division (Presiding Judge Kim Dong-hyun) of the Seoul Central District Court.
Previously, on September 30, during the prosecution’s summation trial, they requested a three-year prison sentence for Lee, which is the maximum under the Supreme Court’s sentencing guidelines for perjury and perjury coaching offenses.
The prosecution argued that perjury disrupts the verification of substantive truth and undermines judicial order, leading to societal chaos. They emphasized that repeated lies and encouraging further perjury fundamentally threaten democracy.
In contrast, during his final statement, Lee denied the allegations, questioning why he, as a governor, would request someone unreliable to lie for him. He noted that Kim Jin-sung had offered to adjust his testimony, to which Lee insisted on testifying truthfully to his memory. Lee criticized the prosecution for concealing unfavorable evidence and manipulating narratives, claiming he hadn’t encountered such practices in his decades-long legal career.
The allegations against Lee include multiple phone calls to Kim Jin-sung, former secretary to the late Seongnam Mayor Kim Byeong-ryang, between December 22 and 24, 2018, requesting him to falsely testify in a trial about false information disclosure related to a “prosecutor impersonation case” in which Lee was implicated with a KBS PD in 2002. Lee was fined 1.5 million won in 2004 for this earlier case.
If convicted of perjury coaching and receiving a sentence of suspended imprisonment or a more substantial penalty, or if found guilty of a violation of the Public Official Election Act with a fine of 100,000 won or more, Lee would be disqualified from running in the next presidential election.
The first instance verdict for Lee’s perjury coaching case is scheduled for the 25th of this month.