Im Woo-jae, ex-Samsung Electro-Mechanics adviser in elderly confinement case, gets suspended sentence confirmed

The Supreme Court has upheld the conviction of Im Woo-jae, a former adviser at Samsung Electro-Mechanics, who received a suspended prison sentence in the second trial for his role in the confinement and assault of a woman in her 80s.

According to legal sources Monday, the Supreme Court's Third Division, presided over by Justice Lee Suk-yeon, dismissed Im's final appeal Tuesday in the case involving charges including aggravated confinement causing injury, confirming the lower court's sentence of one year in prison, suspended for two years. In criminal cases where the grounds for appeal are procedurally defective, the court dismisses the appeal outright without issuing a separate ruling on the merits.

Im's romantic partner, a shaman identified only as A, had her five-year prison sentence confirmed, while the victim's grandson, identified as B, received a confirmed sentence of two years and four months.

Im was indicted after being linked to the confinement and assault of an elderly woman in Yeoncheon-gun, Gyeonggi Province, in April last year, in which the woman was held captive and beaten by her grandson and others.

A, who orchestrated the crime, had fallen out with the victim's son and used her psychological influence over the grandson, B, to have the elderly woman confined and assaulted. When the victim managed to escape and report the crime, A staged a fake suicide incident using the victim's granddaughter.

As police launched a search, closed-circuit television footage captured A driving with the granddaughter in the car alongside her romantic partner — who turned out to be Im.

The court found A guilty of using B and others to confine and assault the victim and of staging a fake disappearance through the victim's granddaughter to obstruct the police investigation. It also found Im guilty of aiding the scheme by transporting the others in his vehicle.

Unlike the first trial, which convicted Im as a co-principal and sentenced him to one year in prison, the second trial held him liable only as an accessory and handed down a suspended sentence, taking into account that Im had participated passively and did not directly benefit from the crime.

Im married Lee Boo-jin, president of Hotel Shilla, in August 1999. The two divorced after more than five years of litigation that began in 2014.