South Korea's top court upholds two-year sentence for opposition leader

SEOUL: South Korea’s Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a two-year jail sentence for prominent opposition leader Cho Kuk for forging academic documents to secure his children’s admission to prestigious schools.

Cho has been at the forefront of efforts to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol in the wake of his short-lived imposition of martial law last week, which plunged democratic South Korea into political chaos.

“The Supreme Court finds the charges of obstruction of business, and public and private document forgery… against the defendant to be valid,” the country’s highest court said in a statement, upholding a lower court’s ruling.

Cho, formerly a high-profile academic and an aide to ex-president Moon Jae-in, was once considered a rising political star and a potential candidate to succeed his boss.

He was appointed to lead the powerful justice ministry in 2019.

But he was shortly after embroiled in a scandal over his children’s education, accused of forging academic documents for his son and daughter to give them an advantage in college and graduate school admissions.

Seoul’s Central District Court sentenced him to two years in 2023, saying: “the nature of his crimes is grave, as he exploited his position as a college professor to obstruct admissions processes over many years”.

Cho’s liberal Rebuilding Korea party won 12 seats in this year’s parliamentary elections on an anti-Yoon platform.

Thursday’s verdict will see Cho, long seen as a possible candidate for president, lose his parliamentary seat.

He is expected to report to a correctional facility to begin his sentence.

Local media reported that prosecutors have demanded he submit as early as Friday.