Attention has turned to Ku Hoe-keun, 58, the Seoul High Court senior judge who acquitted Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon. Ku, a member of the 22nd class of the Judicial Research and Training Institute, is seen as having ruled in major cases on legal requirements and evidence rather than on political interests or the controversy surrounding a case. In criminal trials in particular, the judge has drawn a line between circumstances that raise suspicion of a crime and proof sufficient to establish guilt, stressing that prosecutors bear a strict burden of proof. Because the judge has acquitted figures on both the progressive and conservative sides, legal observers say it is difficult to read a political leaning from any single ruling.
According to the legal community on the 23rd, Ku in June 2019 acquitted the director and producer of "The Hundred Years' War," a documentary that took a critical view of former Presidents Rhee Syng-man and Park Chung-hee, in an appellate trial on charges of defaming the dead.
The Seoul High Court's Criminal Division 13, presided over by Ku at the time, ruled that "the substantive truth about historical facts cannot be known, but it is difficult to find objective evidence that the claims were clearly false," adding that "it also appears difficult to say the defendants were aware that the content was false."
The documentary included content to the effect that Rhee was an opportunist and a pro-Japanese collaborator who took part in the independence movement to pursue personal power. The portion prosecutors indicted, however, concerned content stating that Rhee had been arrested and charged in the United States for violating a specific law. The court found that the falsity of that content had not been sufficiently established by objective evidence, and that it was also difficult to conclude the production team had believed it to be false.
In May of the same year, the judge acquitted the late human rights lawyer Cho Young-rae in a retrial 47 years after his conviction in the "Seoul National University students' insurrection conspiracy" case under the Park Chung-hee government. The court found that "the defendant was unlawfully arrested and gave statements under torture, and even looking at the remaining evidence apart from those statements, it is difficult to establish guilt." The ruling held not only that statements obtained through torture could not be admitted as evidence, but that the other evidence alone could not prove guilt.
In November 2023, presiding over the Seoul High Court's Civil Division 33, Ku overturned a lower court's dismissal and ruled in favor of the plaintiffs in a second damages suit brought by victims of Japanese military sexual slavery against the Japanese government. The court held that the Japanese government must pay 200 million won each to the victims. Unlike the first-instance court, which applied the principle of state immunity holding that a sovereign state is in principle not subject to trial in another country's courts, the appellate court found it reasonable to recognize the jurisdiction of Korean courts in light of customary international law.
Ku has also acquitted politicians on the conservative side for lack of evidence. In February 2020, the judge upheld an acquittal on appeal for Kweon Seong-dong, then a lawmaker with the Liberty Korea Party, now the People Power Party, who had been indicted on charges of soliciting hires at Kangwon Land. The Seoul High Court's Criminal Division 13 acquitted him of charges including obstruction of business and abuse of authority, as the first-instance court had, saying that "in a criminal trial, it is ultimately the prosecutor who bears the burden of proof" and that "the prosecutor failed to prove the case to the point of excluding a judge's reasonable doubt." The reasoning was that even if hiring fraud did occur at Kangwon Land, the charge that Kweon was involved in improper hiring had to be proved separately.
The same standard appeared in a recent political funds case. On the 7th of this month, Ku overturned a first-instance conviction and acquitted former President Yoon Suk-yeol on appeal. Yoon had been indicted on charges of receiving opinion polls free of charge from political broker Myung Tae-kyun.
The first-instance court found that Yoon had obtained a financial benefit equivalent to the cost of the polls, but the appellate court held that political advice and assistance provided by Myung were difficult to treat as a financial benefit under the Political Funds Act. The court also found it could not be concluded that there had been any agreement on commissioning the polls or providing them free of charge, based only on circumstances such as the long-standing relationship between Yoon and his wife and Myung, the conducting of the polls and the delivery of their results. While acknowledging facts such as the couple's involvement in a party nomination for Myung, the court found insufficient evidence that they had reached a meeting of minds to receive the polls at no cost.
A similar conclusion was reached on the 23rd in Oh's political funds case. The court acknowledged that the polling costs had been paid by a third party but found that it had not been sufficiently proved that Oh commissioned the polls or was involved in having the costs covered by someone else. In particular, the court found that Myung's statements, the key evidence, lacked credibility, and overturned the first-instance conviction. The reasoning was that the mere fact that the polls were conducted and the costs covered by another party could not establish Oh's criminal liability.
In 2010, in the first-instance trial of a Public Official Election Act case involving President Lee Jae-myung, who had just been elected mayor of Seongnam, Ku also separated the question of whether the law had been violated from the grounds for sentencing. Presiding over Criminal Division 1 at the Seongnam branch of the Suwon District Court, the judge fined Lee 500,000 won. Lee had been indicted on charges of distributing 300 business cards inside a subway station ahead of the local elections.
The court found that the first basement-level passageway at Sanseong Station, where the cards were handed out, fell within a "subway station premises," where distributing business cards is prohibited under the Public Official Election Act. In sentencing, however, the court took into account room for confusion in the National Election Commission's guidebook, fairness relative to other candidates who had done something similar, and the difficulty of concluding that the act had directly affected the election outcome. Prosecutors had sought a fine of 1 million won, an amount that would have voided his election, but the court imposed a fine of 500,000 won. The ruling was upheld by the Supreme Court, allowing Lee to keep the mayor's post.
A native of Gwangyang, South Jeolla Province (Jeollanam-do), Ku graduated from Yonsei University's law school and passed the bar examination in 1990. The judge began serving at the Suwon District Court and worked at the Seoul Central District Court and the Hongseong branch of the Daejeon District Court, among others. After an extended training stint at Germany's Goethe University Frankfurt, the judge served as a judge at the Daejeon High Court, a professor at the Judicial Research and Training Institute, a judge at the Seoul High Court, head of the Jangheung branch of the Gwangju District Court, head of the Suncheon branch of the Gwangju District Court and Gwangju Family Court, a senior judge at the Gwangju High Court, and first and second chief senior judge for civil cases at the Seoul Central District Court. The judge currently presides over the Seoul High Court's Criminal Division 7.