Court rules Yoon's insurrection verdict must name defendants

People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy has won a first-instance lawsuit demanding that the verdict in former President Yoon Suk Yeol's insurrection leadership case be released with the defendants' real names.

Seoul Administrative Court's Administrative Division 7, presided over by Judge Kang Woo-chan, ruled Thursday in favor of People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy in its suit against the chief judge of Seoul Central District Court, seeking to overturn the court's refusal to disclose the information.

In March, Seoul Central District Court posted the verdict in Yoon's insurrection leadership case on its website but anonymized key information, including names and titles. Yoon was identified only as "Defendant E." Earlier, the Constitutional Court had released the full text of its ruling on Yoon's impeachment with the real names of Yoon and other parties.

People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy had filed a public information request for a version of the verdict bearing Yoon's real name, but Seoul Central District Court refused. The court cited the Code of Criminal Procedure, saying no provision existed allowing the public to inspect or copy an unfinalized criminal verdict. It also cited privacy concerns as grounds for the anonymization.

People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy then filed the lawsuit. The group argued that most of the key defendants were civil servants who had led or participated in the insurrection by abusing their official authority, and that disclosing their real names was necessary given the gravity of the case and the imperative to uphold the Constitution.

The court said the central question was whether members of the general public are absolutely prohibited, under any circumstances, from inspecting or obtaining copies of an unfinalized criminal verdict.

The court said the Code of Criminal Procedure does not explicitly prohibit the public from inspecting or copying an unfinalized criminal verdict — it simply leaves the matter unaddressed, creating a regulatory gap. Because the restriction is not grounded in any other specific law, the court added, it cannot be regarded as falling outside the scope of the public information disclosure framework.

The court further found that interpreting the Code of Criminal Procedure as an absolute bar on public access to unfinalized criminal verdicts would likely violate the constitutional principle of proportionality.

The court said separately that if a court were to overlook this constitutional perspective and adopt such an interpretation in a ruling, it could give rise to a constitutional complaint — a mechanism by which a party may petition the Constitutional Court to overturn a finalized court ruling that infringes on constitutionally guaranteed rights.

If the ruling is upheld, Seoul Central District Court will be required to make a fresh determination, under the Public Information Disclosure Act, on whether and to what extent the verdict should be made public.