Song Young-gil Former Aide "Admits Receiving 50 Million Won and Providing 60 Million Won to Yoon Kwan-seok"

Defense attorney claims at preparatory hearing "Payment is expense reimbursement, not bribery of voters"

Park Yong-su (53), a former aide to former Democratic Party leader Song Young-gil, who is considered a 'key man' in the money envelope allegations related to the Democratic Party leadership election, admitted in court to providing 60 million won to independent lawmaker Yoon Kwan-seok (detained and indicted).

Park Yong-su, former aide to Song Young-gil, former leader of the Democratic Party of Korea, who has been indicted on charges including violation of the Political Parties Act, is attending the warrant hearing at the Seoul Central District Court.
[Image source=Yonhap News]

Park's lawyer expressed this opinion at the second preparatory hearing held on the 12th at the Seoul Central District Court Criminal Division 21-2 (Presiding Judges Kim Jeong-gon, Kim Mi-kyung, Heo Kyung-moo). The lawyer acknowledged that Park received 50 million won in April 2021 from businessman Kim, who acted as a 'sponsor' aiming for former leader Song's victory in the party election. The lawyer also admitted that Park combined this money with off-the-books funds within the campaign to raise a total of 60 million won, which was then passed to lawmaker Yoon through former Democratic Party Deputy Secretary-General Lee Jeong-geun (detained and indicted). The prosecution believes that lawmaker Yoon distributed 20 money envelopes worth 3 million won each to Democratic Party lawmakers using this money.

However, the lawyer argued that the distribution should be seen as a conspiracy involving lawmaker Yoon, former Korea Water Resources Corporation Standing Auditor Kang Rae-gu (detained and indicted), and Lee, and that it is unfair to single out Park for the part where the money was delivered to lawmaker Yoon.

The lawyer also admitted to charges of providing 500,000 won to Seoul regional situation room chief Lee for election campaign expenses and 7 million won to another Seoul regional situation room chief Park for operating a call center for telephone election campaigning. The lawyer contended, "This case is primarily about paying expenses, not providing money to buy votes," adding, "There are no regulations for paying campaign workers in internal elections, so even meal expenses cannot be paid, making it difficult to comply with established laws regardless of party affiliation."

The lawyer denied charges of paying 92.4 million won for primary opinion poll costs using funds from the external support organization of former leader Song, the public interest corporation 'Peace and Livelihood Research Institute' (Meoksa-yeon), and then attempting to conceal this by issuing false estimates, as well as charges of instructing the Meoksa-yeon secretary-general to replace all computer hard drives to destroy evidence.

Although defendants are not required to attend preparatory hearings, Park appeared in court wearing a prison uniform that day. The court reiterated its plan to conduct common direct examination of prosecution witnesses, as the charges against lawmaker Yoon and Kang, who are separately indicted and under trial, overlap significantly with Park's. Accordingly, Lee is expected to appear as a witness on either the 10th or 16th of next month.

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