Seoul City Hall erupts in cheers as Mayor Oh Se-hoon cleared on appeal

At 2 p.m. Friday, Seoul City Hall fell eerily quiet. Employees gathered around television monitors installed throughout the building, their eyes and ears fixed on the screen. It was the scheduled hour for the appeals court sentencing in the political funds law violation case against Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon. With the ruling also streamed live on YouTube, the atmosphere inside City Hall was visibly tense.

But as the presiding judge began reading the verdict, the mood shifted from anxiety to relief. Around 2:10 p.m., the silence gave way to applause and cries of "Not guilty!"

Immediately after the ruling, a senior Seoul city official said the outcome was "a relief in terms of the continuity of city administration and the ongoing pursuit of various policies and projects," adding that the mood had already been positive after evidence favorable to the mayor's side was admitted earlier in the proceedings.

Another city official, speaking by phone, said the acquittal was "a natural result," but admitted, "We were on edge worrying that, just by some chance, things might go the other way."

The court said Friday it found it "difficult to give credibility to the testimony of Myung Tae-kyun, the sole direct evidence," and that "the fragmentary facts established by the remaining evidence are insufficient to support the charges in this case," concluding that "the portion found guilty at the first trial cannot stand."

With Oh overturning his first-instance conviction and winning an acquittal on appeal, the mood at City Hall brightened considerably — evoking, for some, the atmosphere of his come-from-behind victory in the June 3 local elections, when he was elected to a fifth term as Seoul mayor. When Oh returned to City Hall around 2:50 p.m. after leaving the courthouse, senior officials and staff came out to greet him with applause. He made no public remarks and headed directly to his sixth-floor office.

The ruling is expected to give fresh momentum to Oh's key policy agenda in his ninth elected term. Initiatives likely to benefit include the Han River ferry service — launched last year and having surpassed 700,000 cumulative riders as of Oct. 7 — along with his push to revitalize the nighttime economy and a suite of quality-of-life policies centered on supporting the vulnerable.

Oh posted on SNS on Friday to thank the public. "I sincerely thank all the citizens who believed in me and watched over me," he wrote. "I will work even harder and repay that trust with results."

He added that he would "devote myself to city administration with an even greater sense of responsibility," pledging to make Seoul "a city where every resident's life is happy — a special city for quality of life."

With the acquittal effectively removing the legal risk hanging over him, Oh is now seen as a more formidable conservative contender for the next presidential race. Some analysts, however, note that his term ends and the next presidential election both fall in 2030, raising the possibility that the remainder of his tenure could be shaped by presidential ambitions.