Yoon acquitted in first trial over appointment of ex-defense minister to Australia post

Former President Yoon Suk Yeol was acquitted Friday in a first-instance ruling on charges that he appointed former Defense Minister Lee Jong-sup as ambassador to Australia to help him flee a Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials probe into alleged interference with the investigation into a Marine Corps soldier's death.

The Seoul Central District Court's Criminal Division 22, presided over by Judge Jo Hyeong-u, handed down the not-guilty verdict. Five co-defendants tried on the same harboring-a-fugitive charges — former National Intelligence Service Director Jo Tae-yong, former National Security Office chief Jang Ho-jin, former presidential secretary for public service discipline Lee Si-won, former Justice Minister Park Seong-jae and former Prosecutor General Shim Woo-hyun — were also acquitted.

The court said it was difficult to conclude that Yoon had intended to help Lee evade the investigation.

The court said there was room to view the appointment as reflecting Yoon's own policy and political judgment, given the importance of defense cooperation between South Korea and Australia.

It added that it could not rule out the possibility that, at the time of the appointment, Yoon held only an abstract awareness that Lee was "a person who had been reported to the CIO and was causing controversy." The court found no basis to conclude that Yoon had acted with the specific intent to obstruct the CIO's investigation by appointing someone he recognized as having committed a crime.

The court also ruled that appointing Lee as ambassador to Australia did not constitute an act of helping a fugitive flee.

It reasoned that harboring a fugitive means preventing investigators from locating a suspect, and does not cover every situation in which investigative proceedings are merely delayed or made more cumbersome.

The court further noted that an ambassador's whereabouts, identity and posting are officially confirmed and publicly announced, making the role fundamentally different in nature from "fleeing" in the ordinary sense. It also said it could not conclude that Lee had been entirely unable to respond to summons from investigative authorities while serving as ambassador to Australia.

Yoon had been accused of ordering Lee's appointment as ambassador to Australia in November 2023 — four months after Marine Cpl. Chae died in July 2023 while searching for missing persons during heavy flooding — to help Lee, a key suspect in the alleged investigation-interference case, escape to Australia.

The Marine Corps special prosecutor's team, led by Special Prosecutor Lee Myeong-hyeon, charged Yoon on the grounds that he appointed Lee as ambassador to help him flee, fearing the CIO's investigation into the alleged interference would eventually reach him.

At the closing arguments hearing in July, the special prosecutor's team argued that Yoon had "comprehensively violated the state's investigative authority for private purposes" and asked the court to impose a five-year prison sentence. Yoon's defense maintained that the appointment was a matter of policy judgment and sought acquittal.

Immediately after the verdict, Yoon's legal team said the ruling was "an entirely natural conclusion given the legal principles and the record," and called on the special prosecutor to "take the legal reasoning and significance of the not-guilty verdict seriously, rather than continuing to pursue an overreaching criminal trial."