S. Korea president’s confidant gets 2-year prison term for opinion rigging

South Gyeongsang Province Gov. Kim Kyoung-soo enters the Seoul Central District Court to attend the sentencing trial of an opinion rigging case on Jan. 30, 2019. (Yonhap)

SEOUL, Jan 30, 2019, Yonhap. A confidant of President Moon Jae-in was found guilty Wednesday of involvement in a massive rigging of comments on Internet news articles aimed at swaying public opinion in favor of Moon ahead of the 2017 presidential election, reported the Yonhap.

The Seoul Central District Court sentenced South Gyeongsang Province Gov. Kim Kyoung-soo to two years in prison for colluding with a power blogger to carry out the illicit cyber operation.

The court also added another 10 months of incarceration for Kim, for violating the political fund law, but suspended the sentence for two years.

The governor was immediately taken into custody following the court ruling. Kim’s lawyer said he will appeal. If convicted by the Supreme Court, Kim will lose his governorship.

The 51-year-old politician was indicted for working with Kim Dong-won, a blogger better known by the nickname Druking, to artificially jack up the number of “likes” on Internet political comments to boost positive public sentiment for Moon, then presidential frontrunner of the then main opposition Democratic Party (DP).

Wednesday’s court ruling could deal a heavy political blow to the Moon government as the judiciary publicly acknowledged that the governor “benefitted” from Druking’s scheme that eventually helped create positive public sentiment toward the DP and Moon during the election campaign.

Moon won the snap election in May 2017, which came after his predecessor, Park Geun-hye, was ousted from office by the Constitutional Court over an influence-peddling scandal.

The same bench sentenced the blogger, Kim, to 3 1/2 years in prison in a separate trial held earlier in the day, suspending an additional six-month jail term for one year for violating the political fund law.

Share it


Exclusive: Beyond the Covid-19 world's coverage