South Korean President Lee pardons ex-minister Cho Kuk over fraud, abuse of power scandals

President Lee Jae Myung on Aug 11 pardoned former justice minister Cho Kuk, a key architect of former president Moon Jae-in’s prosecutorial reforms, who later fell from grace over a college admissions scandal involving his children.

Effective from Aug 15, the pardon, approved during an extraordinary Cabinet meeting, not only frees Mr Cho from serving his sentence but also restores his eligibility to run for public office – potentially allowing him to contest in the 2026 local elections.

Mr Cho was one of 2,188 convicts who were granted a presidential pardon.

Convicted of forging academic credentials for his children to help their college admission and abuse of power over a government audit, Mr Cho has been in prison since December 2024, when his two-year sentence was finalised at the country’s top court.

If he were to complete his jail term in December 2026, he would have been ineligible to stand as a candidate until December 2031 under the Public Official Election Act, as the law bans him from running for office for the following five years.

Mr Cho, a former Seoul National University law professor, was a key ally of Mr Moon and a prominent advocate for prosecutorial reform. As justice minister in 2019, he sought to limit the powers of prosecutors but resigned just 35 days into the job after a torrent of financial and academic malpractice was exposed involving him and his family.

Prosecutors accused Mr Cho of involvement in a scheme that allegedly gave his daughter and son unfair advantages through falsified or exaggerated extracurricular records, including the disputed authorship of a research paper.

In 2024, his daughter Cho Min was found guilty of using forged documents to enter university and medical school, fined 10 million won (S$9,200) and stripped of her medical degree.

The probe into Mr Cho was led by then Prosecutor General Yoon Suk Yeol, whose high-profile clash with Mr Moon’s administration forced him out of the prosecution and into politics. Yoon won the 2022 presidential election.

Mr Cho later founded the Rebuilding Korea Party, which secured 12 seats in the 300-member National Assembly in April 2024.

He has repeatedly called the prosecution politically motivated, a view echoed by Mr Moon, who urged the incumbent presidential office to grant him clemency last week.

Also pardoned on Aug 11 were Mr Cho’s wife Chung Kyung-shim, who is serving a four-year sentence in the same case, and former liberal lawmaker Choe Kang-wook, who was convicted of issuing a fake internship certificate for Mr Cho’s son.

Also among those pardoned were former Seoul education chief Cho Hee-yeon, who lost his seat after he was convicted of abusing his power in the process of hiring five teachers, and human rights activist-turned-liberal politician Yoon Mi-hyang, who was handed down a suspended sentence of embezzling donations to “comfort women”, victims of sex slavery during Japanese colonial rule.

Conservative politicians such as former lawmakers Jung Chan-min, Hong Moon-jong and Shim Hak-bong were also granted pardons. Among the entrepreneurs was SK Networks chairman Chey Shin-won.

President Lee also granted clemency to 184 cargo truck drivers who were convicted of instigating violence during their nationwide strike when Mr Lee’s conservative predecessor Yoon was in office.

Mr Lee’s decision follows a reported decision by the Amnesty Review Committee under the Justice Ministry that was chaired by Minister Jung Sung-ho in the previous week.

The decision was made just before the National Liberation Day holiday which falls on Aug 15. A South Korean president tends to grant a presidential amnesty marking either the Aug 15 Liberation Day or the Lunar New Year’s Day. THE KOREA HERALD/ ASIA NEWS NETWORK