Prosecutors from a special counsel’s office asked an appeals court in Seoul on Friday to sentence Mayor Oh Se-hoon to 18 months in prison, the same term they sought at his trial over opinion-poll costs paid by a supporter before the 2021 mayoral by-election.
The request came at the closing hearing of Mr. Oh’s appeal at the Seoul High Court, where a criminal division presided over by Judge Koo Hoi-geun heard final arguments on charges he violated the Political Funds Act. The special counsel’s team also asked for a forfeiture of 33 million won and told the judges that Mr. Oh, as a leading politician, had a greater duty than most to obey the law but instead had a third party pay for his polls. The court set its ruling for Oct. 23.
The special counsel, appointed to investigate allegations around the former first lady Kim Keon-hee, indicted Mr. Oh without detention in December. Prosecutors say that before the April 7, 2021, by-election he commissioned 10 rounds of polling from a political broker, Myung Tae-kyun, and had a supporter, a businessman named Kim Han-jung, cover the 33 million won cost. At Friday’s hearing the prosecutors asked for one-year prison terms for two co-defendants: Kang Cheol-won, a former vice mayor of Seoul for political affairs, and Mr. Kim.
The trial court went part of the way with the prosecutors. It found that Mr. Oh commissioned and arranged payment for five of the 10 polls, but it found that Mr. Myung conducted the other five on his own initiative or at a third party’s request, or that who paid was unclear. In July it fined Mr. Oh 10 million won ($6,800), a penalty heavy enough, if it stands, to force him from office. Both sides appealed.
In his final statement, Mr. Oh told the court that from the day he entered politics he was determined to be a clean politician and had led efforts to write laws making political funds transparent. “For someone like me to have asked a supporter to pay for polling on my behalf is something I cannot even imagine,” he said. He added that the polls at issue were taken early in the race, just after he declared his candidacy, when the standings could shift at any time and the results mattered little.
Mr. Oh wiped tears from his face several times during the statement. Under Article 57 of the Political Funds Act, a public official fined 1 million won or more for unlawfully receiving political funds is barred from office for five years once the sentence is final; anyone already holding a post must leave it.