A South Korean court on Monday sentenced former president Yoon Suk-yeol to 18 months in prison, suspended for three years, after finding him guilty of violating the election law by making false statements during his 2022 presidential campaign. The sentence, if upheld through appeals, could force Yoon’s People Power Party to return 39.7 billion won (US$27.1 million) in election expenses reimbursed by the National Election Commission following his presidential election victory. The Seoul...
A South Korean court’s conviction of Seoul’s mayor for illegal polling payments threatens to put an end to his presidential ambitions just weeks after he won a historic fifth term. Oh Se-hoon, the 65-year-old conservative who has led South Korea’s capital on and off for nearly two decades, was fined 10 million won (US$6,800) on Wednesday for violating the Political Funds Act ahead of the mayoral by-election in 2021. Under South Korean law, any elected official fined more than 1 million won for...
A viral YouTube video, a one-star review on a delivery app, a heated post on a parenting community – all of these will fall under the same legal standard in South Korea starting next Tuesday. The revised Information and Communications Network Act, widely known as the “fake news” law, introduces punitive damages for YouTubers with more than 100,000 subscribers and high-traffic TikTok accounts if they display what authorities define as “unlawful” content. Platforms such as Naver, Kakao, Google and...