Lawyers for Lee Hwa-young, the former vice governor of Gyeonggi Province for peace affairs who is imprisoned over the Ssangbangwool North Korea remittance case, said they will file for a retrial late this month.
In an official statement on the 13th, the legal team said it had decided to pursue only a retrial request, describing it as the measure available within legal procedures. The filing will be made within this month, the lawyers said.
The legal team said other steps risked being misunderstood as tied to political aims, and that it had therefore chosen to seek only a retrial, the one step available within legal procedures. Any position that differs from this does not represent the official view of the legal team, the lawyers said. That means a push for parole and a request for a special pardon will not be pursued for now.
Lee is serving a prison term of seven years and eight months, finalized by the Supreme Court, on charges of taking bribes from Ssangbangwool Group and conspiring in remittances to North Korea. In June this year, he received an additional four-month sentence in a trial by jury on perjury charges related to claims that he had been induced to testify at a so-called "salmon drinking party."
Lee's side has recently called publicly for parole. Kim Kwang-min, a lawyer for Lee, said recently that the former vice governor was deeply angered at President Lee Jae-myung. Lee Jin-soo, the vice justice minister serving as acting justice minister, said at a parliamentary audit of the Ministry of Justice on the 8th that Lee did not meet the requirements for parole.
In a recent statement, Lee said he also sympathized with the anguish of the president, who he said was suffering from fabricated charges as he was. He asked the public to help ensure that a special prosecutor swiftly punishes the Suwon District Prosecutors' Office prosecutors who he said fabricated falsehoods. He also said prosecutors had fabricated the North Korea remittance and bribery charges and that the court had completed the process by rejecting evidence of his innocence. He urged the public not to let his sacrifice go to waste and to use him as kindling to break the power of the courts.