Court Rejects Retrial Request of Former Unified Progressive Party Lawmaker Lee Seok-gi and Six Others Accused of 'Insurrection Incitement'

Former Unified Progressive Party lawmaker Lee Seok-ki.

[Asia Economy Reporter Choi Seok-jin, Legal Affairs Specialist] The court has rejected the retrial requests of former Unified Progressive Party lawmakers, including former lawmaker Lee Seok-gi, who was sentenced to 9 years in prison in 2015 for charges of inciting rebellion and violating the National Security Act.

According to the legal community on the 9th, the Seoul High Court Criminal Division 2 (Presiding Judge Yoon Seung-eun, Kim Dae-hyun, Ha Tae-han) dismissed the retrial requests of Lee and six others on the 6th.

Lee was arrested and indicted in September 2013 on charges of conspiring to carry out concrete actions to overthrow the Republic of Korea system while sympathizing with North Korea's theory of revolution against the South, as the head of the Revolutionary Organization (RO).

The first trial court found Lee guilty of both conspiracy to commit rebellion and incitement to rebellion, sentencing him to 12 years in prison and 10 years of disqualification. The appellate court acquitted him of conspiracy to commit rebellion and reduced the sentence to 9 years in prison and 7 years of disqualification.

The appellate court's ruling on Lee was finalized by the Supreme Court's full bench in January 2015.

Six others, including Kim Hong-yeol, former chairman of the Unified Progressive Party's Gyeonggi Province branch, who were tried alongside Lee, received sentences of 3 to 5 years in prison, and had already completed their terms and been released before filing for retrial.

Earlier, in June 2019, Lee and others filed for retrial on the grounds that evidence had emerged showing that the judiciary under former Chief Justice Yang Sung-tae had treated their trials as part of a judicial deal with the Blue House.

At that time, the "Defense Counsel Group for Retrial of the Fabricated Conspiracy to Commit Rebellion Case for the Restoration of Judicial Justice" held a press conference in front of the Seoul Central District Court building in Seocho-dong, Seoul, stating, "The conspiracy to commit rebellion case against former lawmaker Lee was one of the representative judicial corruption trial deals during Chief Justice Yang Sung-tae's tenure," and added, "Time cannot be reversed, but wrongful judgments can and must be corrected."

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