Park Jong-joon, the former head of South Korea's Presidential Security Service, was sentenced to one year in prison by an appeals court for deleting secure phone data belonging to former President Yoon Suk-yeol and others following the Dec. 3 martial law crisis. A lower court had acquitted Park, accepting that he may have erased the information as part of a security measure, but the appeals court found that he approved the deletion while aware that call logs and other evidence would be destroyed, thereby accepting the outcome of evidence tampering.
The Seoul High Court's Criminal Division 12-2, presided over by judges Cho Jin-gu, Kim Min-ah and Lee Seung-cheol, overturned the acquittal on the 14th and sentenced Park to one year in prison on charges of destroying evidence. The special counsel team led by Cho Eun-suk, investigating the insurrection case, had sought a three-year prison term.
Park was indicted in December last year on charges of deleting secure phone data belonging to Yoon, former National Intelligence Service First Deputy Director Hong Jang-won and former Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency Commissioner Kim Bong-sik through a "remote logout" method.
The trial court acquitted Park, saying it was difficult to conclude that he had intent to destroy evidence. "The fact that, in hindsight, the measures were inadequate or that a more desirable method existed does not allow us to presume intent to destroy evidence," the court said at the time. It accepted Park's argument that he deleted the information as part of a security measure after Yoon's secure phone ID and other details had been exposed.
The appeals court, however, concluded that Park did have intent to destroy evidence. The court found that at the time of the deletion, Park knew the information constituted evidence in the insurrection cases involving Yoon and others. It also determined that because he approved the action despite knowing that deleting a secure phone user account would erase electronic data such as call logs stored on the device, he accepted that evidence would be destroyed. The court also found him guilty of conspiring with former NIS Director Cho Tae-yong to delete electronic data from Hong's secure phone.
The court rejected Park's argument that the action was taken to prevent a security breach. "Even if there was a purpose of preventing a security breach, the deletion cannot be seen as an urgent and unavoidable means," the court said. "The defendant's conduct cannot be regarded as a justifiable act." On sentencing, the court said the destruction of evidence "had a negative impact on uncovering the substantive truth in the insurrection cases involving Yoon Suk-yeol and others surrounding the emergency martial law, and also hindered the state's exercise of criminal justice authority."
Separately, Park was indicted on charges of obstructing the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials from executing an arrest warrant for Yoon. He was sentenced to four years in prison and taken into custody in that case, with an appeals ruling scheduled for the 28th of this month.