by WorldTribune Staff, June 8, 2025 Real World News
South Korea’s new president, the leftist Lee Jae-Myung still has some very serious charges pending against him. There are five criminal cases in total.
For perhaps this and other reasons, he was eager to be acknowledged by the man most anti-conservative globalists despise: U.S. President Donald J. Trump.
South Korean President Lee Jae-Myung / Video ImageWaiting For The Call
Trump did not immediately send a message personally congratulating Lee on his victory over the conservative, Kim Moon-soo, in Tuesday’s election as would be customary. Lee did receive such expressions from the Chinese Communist Party’s Xi Jinping and from Japanese prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba.
While critics say judges have gone to great lengths to shield Lee from standing trial, Lee’s government is going hard after former President Yoon Suk-Yeol, a conservative.
Related: U.S. silence on South Korea’s election may lead to one-party state in CCP’s orbit, analyst warns, June 2, 2025
Edo Naito, a naturalized Japanese commentator on politics, law and history, delivered a scathing analysis of Lee’s new-found fortune in court proceedings:
One criminal case found him guilty at the District Court level early this year and sentenced him to one year in prison, but it was ‘surprisingly’ reversed by the High Court, allowing him to proceed with his presidential election campaign. That ruling was then reversed on appeal to the Supreme Court on terms that directed confirmation of the lower court’s criminal sentence would lead to his disqualification to run. The High Court then took the remarkable decision not to start the retrial until AFTER the election. That case is legally required to proceed now that the election is complete.
If that is not bad enough, there is another pending criminal trial that has even greater incriminating aspects to it.
On June 5, the Korean Supreme Court finalized guilty verdicts and a 7-year 8-month prison sentence on former Gyeonggi Vice Gov. Lee Hwa-Young for transferring $8 million to North Korea in violation of the Political Funds Act, the Foreign Exchange Transactions Act, and bribery. $3 million of that amount was sent by Lee Hwa-Young, Lee Jae-Myung’s direct deputy, to North Korea to ensure Pyongyang’s approval for the then Gyeonggi Gov. Lee Jae-Myung to visit North Korea in 2019.
“President Lee has been indicted on the same charges, denied he knew anything about any of this, but he successfully delayed the start of the trial until the recent election was completed,” Naito noted.
“President Lee is now working two legislative paths to avoid being tried, or if tried and found guilty, he can obtain a reversal in the Supreme Court. Lee’s pro-CCP/pro-North Korea Democratic Party that holds a majority in the National Assembly has tendered new legislation that makes any criminal cases against a sitting President, even if found guilty, where the appeal process is not finalized, be suspended until his whole 5-year term is completed.”
The second path, Naito continued, “is even more extraordinary. The DP has tabled a new law that would triple the current number of justices in the Supreme Court to thirty and allow President Lee to appoint them. He concluded:
A third process is one that Lee’s DP loves — they are proposing to impeach the Supreme Court justices who just confirmed his former deputy’s criminal sentences and who reversed his own criminal sentence.
Kick them out, appoint a lot of new ones, and get a new result. Almost CCP like in its design?
Welcome to justice in South Korea under the newly self-proclaimed ‘moderate’ President Lee Jae-Myung.
Toppled Rival Could Face Life Sentence Or Execution
South Korea’s National Assembly, meanwhile, has rapidly passed legislation calling for investigations of impeached President Yoon’s abortive attempt at imposing martial law last December and of his wife for involvement in what was known as “Diorgate.”
“Lee’s determination to inflict severe punishment on Yoon shows the depth of hostility between left and right in a society in which the divisions only increased in the 60 days of campaigning that culminated in Lee’s decisive victory in Tuesday’s “snap election,” Donald Kirk wrote for The New York Sun on June 5.
Yoon is already on trial in a district court after being charged with “insurrection.”
Kirk, a WorldTribune.com contributing editor, noted: “South Korea’s newly elected president, Lee Jae-Myung, clearly wants to pillory his most dangerous opponent with claims that will convince the public of the full extent of his alleged crimes. While it’s unlikely the court would impose the maximum sentence — the death penalty — a life sentence is possible for the man whom the ruling Democratic Party, or Minju, accuses of staging a ‘coup’ against the government.”
The bill sailed through the 300-seat assembly by a vote of 194 to 3, almost the same number that Lee persuaded to vote against Yoon’s martial law decree three hours after he issued it. The assembly then voted to impeach him. The bill calls for investigation of 11 different charges against Yoon, the most serious of which, beside insurrection, is “mutiny.”
“Almost all members of Yoon’s People Power Party boycotted the vote — a sign of the deep hostility between right and left that’s sure to crystallize in the trials not only of Yoon but also of his former defense minister and about 20 others,” Kirk wrote. “Yoon remains free after being held for 52 days, but the special prosecutor, to be appointed by Lee, is expected to ask the court to put him behind bars again, like all the others facing charges.”
In his inaugural address, Lee said it was “time to build bridges of coexistence, reconciliation, and solidarity over the hatred and confrontation that have divided us,” to “let hope blossom over deep and painful wounds,” but he is clearly behind the raft of charges against Yoon and his confederates. Lee, in the National Assembly before his election as president, pushed through two similar bills. An acting president who was filling in for Yoon after his impeachment, Choi Sang-Mok, vetoed them.
The assembly also passed two other bills that Yoon had vetoed well before his impeachment.
One of them calls for the special prosecutor to reopen the investigation into “Diorgate” — the claim that Yoon’s wife, Kim Keon-Hee, accepted a Christian Dior handbag as a bribe. Yoon as president vetoed a similar bill after a district court had dropped the charge last August for lack of evidence. The same bill also calls for investigating alleged stock manipulation by Yoon’s wife and her mother. Yoon had vetoed that one too.
“The assembly also wants a special prosecutor to investigate claims of Yoon’s role in an investigation into the death of a young marine who drowned two years ago while on a rescue mission with other marines in a flooded region. Yoon is said to have conspired with marine commanders to cover up what happened. The case was in limbo until Yoon’s opponents decided to revive it now that he’s no longer president,” Kirk noted.
The Korea Times reported that Lee’s aides discovered the presidential office almost bare of anything that might be used as evidence.
“Desks sat empty, printers were gone, there was no internet connectivity and security systems were shut down,” the paper reported. “No cabinet documents or briefing materials were left behind for the incoming administration.”
Officials surveying the premises described it as “a war zone after a retreat” and “a crime scene,” the paper quoted them as saying. “It feels like a tomb,” one of them reportedly said. “There’s no printer, no internet, not even a pen.”
President Trump Finally Calls
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump and Lee “are now on speaking terms,” Kirk noted in a June 7 analysis.
Trump called Lee late Thursday. “Primed to stay up for the call, Lee accepted Trump’s congratulations for his election Tuesday,” Kirk noted.
“They offered assurances that they would work to relieve the South of its worries about the high tariffs that Trump wants to impose on some of Korea’s biggest exports. They include steel, aluminum, and motor vehicles.”
Trump has said he would focus on the threat posed by Chinese expansionism in the Indo-Pacific, “leaving the impression here that South Korea would face North Korea almost alone,” Kirk added.
Lee said the U.S. alliance “remains the foundation of Seoul’s foreign policy,” and a spokesman said his talk with Trump was conducted in “a friendly and candid atmosphere.” However, the generally pro-North Korea Lee had earlier described the Americans as “an occupation force” while Trump has hinted at withdrawing several thousand troops from South Korea.
Kirk noted: “Neither, however, seemed to want to get into such sensitive issues as American troop strength or Korea’s contribution to the costs of keeping them here.”
Lee has said that “closer relations with China will occur within the framework of South Korea’s alliance with the U.S.,” a professor of international relations at England’s University of Bradford, Christopher Bluth, writes. “But, with Washington and Beijing battling for global influence, this is still likely to become a major point of tension with the US. The Trump administration has taken a hawkish approach towards China and wants its allies to do the same.”
South Korean judges have found multiple ways to avoid prosecuting new president added by Editor Two on June 8, 2025
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