South Korea worker cleared of stealing snacks from office fridge after 2 years in court

SEOUL – The goods he was accused of stealing cost about 70 US cents (90 Singapore cents). Proving his innocence cost more than US$9,000.

It began one early morning in January 2024 when a security guard took two popular South Korean snacks from a company’s office fridge. One, a Choco Pie, cost about 30 US cents, and the other, a mini custard cake, cost about 40 US cents. Later that month, the company accused him of theft, leading to his prosecution.

The case set off national outrage. The company, a logistics sub-contractor of Hyundai, claimed the security guard was barred from helping himself to the fridge’s contents because he was its sub-contractor, not a staff member. He insisted he was innocent, saying that people at the office had invited him to take the snacks.

Nearly two years later, an appellate judge declared the man innocent on Nov 27, according to the district court of Jeonju, the city in the country’s south where the case was tried.

An initial guilty verdict in April had put the 40-year-old worker, whom South Korean officials did not identify by name, at risk of being fired.

“Is this the Jean Valjean of South Korea?” Ms Seo Young-kyo, a lawmaker in the National Assembly, said in a news conference after the verdict on Nov 27, comparing the security guard to the fictional convict who was imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread in the novel Les Miserables.

Ms Seo urged the prosecutors not to appeal against the verdict further, which they can still do for another week. “The overzealous prosecution almost cost a family its breadwinner,” she said.

That the man had to face legal proceedings for such a minor offence angered many South Koreans. It provoked the ire of some lawmakers, who questioned the prosecutor of the case and the court’s chief judge in a public hearing in October.

“I humbly accept the criticism that we are going against the public’s sense of justice,” Mr Shin Dae-gyeong, the chief prosecutor of Jeonju, said in the hearing before the final verdict. He said his office was inviting members of the public to offer feedback through a citizen committee on how prosecutors should proceed with the case.

The man’s lawyer Park Jeong-gyo said that the man had spent at least US$9,240 on legal fees to defend his innocence since 2024.

A judge found him guilty in April and fined him about US$34 – basically, the lowest fine that a court can impose in a criminal case but nearly 50 times the value of what he had eaten. The judge cited a similar conviction in the defendant’s criminal history. The worker appealed.

The case set off suspicions that the logistics firm, which works at a distribution centre of a Hyundai vehicle factory, had an ulterior motive in the case. Lawyer Park said that the man was being punished for his involvement in a workers’ union, which he had joined the month before he was reported to the police.

“The company has abused the law to suppress workers and labour unions,” Mr Lee Min-jeong, the director of the Jeonju branch of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, told reporters after the verdict on Nov 27.

Prosecutors, who faced renewed public scrutiny over the case, reduced their sentencing recommendation in the appeals process, requesting a deferred sentence, a system where sentencing is postponed for a certain period and is waived if no incidents occur in that time.

In appeals, 39 of the man’s co-workers testified that they had snacked in the same office and had not faced any penalties. The Jeonju District Court said in a statement that those testimonies made it difficult to conclude the defendant had an intent to steal.

The security guard said in a statement delivered through his labour union, the Hyundai Motor Jeonju Irregular Workers’ Branch, that he was grateful for the acquittal and that he hoped no other worker would go through the same ordeal. NYTIMES