SEOUL, Feb 2 — South Korean former first lady Kim Keon-hee has appealed against a court ruling today which sentenced her to 20 months in prison for accepting luxury gifts from the Unification Church, Yonhap News Agency reported.
On Wednesday (January 28), the Seoul Central District Court handed down the sentence, making Kim and her husband, ousted former president Yoon Suk-yeol, the country's first former presidential couple to be imprisoned with criminal convictions.
The court found her guilty in 2022 of accepting a Chanel bag and a Graff diamond necklace, along with business favours from the Unification Church, and ordered her to forfeit ₩12.8 million (RM34,660.42).
But it acquitted Kim of two other main charges she faced in the trial: involvement in a stock price manipulation scheme and violating the Political Funds Act.
Her lawyers said they would challenge the guilty verdict, denying that she had ever received the necklace worth ₩62.2 million (RM168,427) and disputing the court's finding that the Chanel bag was a transactional item.
"We have filed an appeal to correct the facts and uncover the truth regarding her acceptance of an item related to a business favour from the Unification Church and the (court's) recognition that she received a (valuable item) when in fact she did not," they said in a statement.
The sentence was far shorter than the 15-year term sought by special counsel Min Joong-ki's team, which filed an appeal on Friday (January 30), claiming "serious" misunderstandings of the facts in the ruling.
Kim had been charged with conspiring to manipulate the stock price of Deutsch Motors, a BMW dealer in South Korea, and making ₩810 million (RM2.19 million) in illegal profits between 2010 and 2012.
She was also indicted under the Political Funds Act for receiving free opinion polls, along with her husband, from a self-proclaimed power broker ahead of the 2022 presidential election.
The court said it could not determine whether Kim served as an accomplice in the stock price manipulation, while also finding her not guilty of the other charge, because the power broker did not exclusively give the polls to the couple.
Yoon, who is standing trial on charges of leading an insurrection through his short-lived imposition of martial law in 2024, has been sentenced to five years in prison on charges stemming from his failed martial law bid.
