Court to Hold First Trial on July 7 for Lee Gyu-won and Cha Gyu-geun in Kim Hak-ui's Illegal Departure Case

Chagyugeun, Director of the Immigration and Foreigners Policy Headquarters at the Ministry of Justice.
[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Choi Seok-jin] The first trial for Prosecutor Lee Gyu-won and Director Cha Gyu-geun of the Ministry of Justice’s Immigration and Foreign Policy Headquarters, who were indicted for involvement in the illegal travel ban allegations against former Deputy Minister of Justice Kim Hak-ui, will be held on the 7th of next month.

According to the court on the 12th, the Seoul Central District Court Criminal Division 27 (Presiding Judge Kim Seon-il) will hold the first pretrial conference for Prosecutor Lee and Director Cha on the afternoon of the 7th of next month.

The pretrial conference is a session to confirm the defendant’s position on the charges and discuss future evidence plans, and the defendant is not obligated to attend.

Earlier, the Suwon District Prosecutors’ Office indicted Prosecutor Lee and Director Cha without detention on the charges of abuse of authority, obstruction of rights, falsification of official documents, and use of false official documents on the 1st of this month.

Prosecutor Lee is accused of, while dispatched to the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office’s Past Affairs Investigation Team in March 2019, submitting an urgent travel ban request to the Incheon Airport Immigration Office using a case number from years earlier in which former Deputy Minister Kim had already been cleared, and subsequently obtaining retroactive approval.

According to the whistleblower report, the urgent travel ban request submitted by Prosecutor Lee at the time included the case number (Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office 2013 Criminal Case No. 65889) of a sexual assault case in which former Deputy Minister Kim was already cleared in 2013 by the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office. However, the urgent travel ban approval request later submitted to the Ministry of Justice contained an investigation number ‘Seoul Eastern District Prosecutors’ Office 2019 Internal Investigation No. 1’ instead of the previously listed case number.

The case number for which the suspect was already cleared cannot be used for an urgent travel ban request, and the 2019 Internal Investigation No. 1 case of the Seoul Eastern District Prosecutors’ Office was only assigned a case number on May 30 of the same year, two months later, for a completely different case, making it clearly a fake case number.

Director Cha is accused of receiving reports 177 times from the Ministry of Justice’s Immigration Inspection Department officials between the morning of March 19 and the afternoon of March 22, 2019, containing personal information inquiries including former Deputy Minister Kim’s name, date of birth, and immigration restriction information.

He is also accused of approving the travel ban request on the morning of the 23rd, a day after Prosecutor Lee illegally imposed the urgent travel ban on former Deputy Minister Kim, despite being aware of the circumstances.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.