Comprehensive Special Counsel Indicts Former KTV Head Lee Eun-woo, Concluding Insurrection Ended with Yoon Suk Yeol's Impeachment

The 2nd Joint Special Counsel Team, led by Kwon Chang-young, which investigates remaining suspicions following the three special counsels, has indicted former Korea Policy Broadcasting (KTV) Director Lee Eun-woo on charges of inciting insurrection related to the December 3 emergency martial law.

The special counsel team announced today (August 11) that it has indicted Lee without detention on charges of instigating insurrection under the Criminal Act.

Lee is accused of repeatedly and intensively broadcasting information justifying insurrectionary acts, such as the emergency martial law and decrees, using KTV's authority to program and transmit breaking news specials and scrolling news tickers from December 3 to December 13, 2024.

He is also charged with selectively blocking and deleting information criticizing or attempting to stop the insurrection, thereby inciting unspecified viewers to sympathize with the insurrectionary acts.

Article 90 of the Criminal Act stipulates that a person who incites or propagates the commission of an insurrection shall be punished by imprisonment with labor or imprisonment without prison labor for not less than three years.

The special counsel team concluded that the end point of the insurrection was not December 4, 2024, when the emergency martial law was lifted, but December 14, 2024, when the impeachment motion against former President Yoon Suk Yeol was passed in the National Assembly.

The special counsel team explained, "Former President Yoon Suk Yeol's insurrection crime is an 'insurrection from above,' which is distinct from the 'insurrection from below' committed by Chun Doo-hwan's new military junta in the past."

Emphasizing that the crime of insurrection is a specific-intent crime (a crime that requires a specific intent for the perpetrator to establish), the team added, "We determined that the insurrectionary act ended when they voluntarily abandoned the achievement of their purpose or became unable to achieve that purpose due to objective obstacles."

Based on this judgment, the special counsel team stated that it indicted Lee by encompassing his actions from December 3 to December 13, 2024, when the emergency martial law was declared, under a single charge of inciting insurrection.

Lee is already on trial after being indicted by the Cho Eun-seok special counsel team on charges including deleting martial law-related broadcasting subtitles.

In June, the court sentenced Lee to one year in prison suspended for two years in the first trial.

The previous special counsel team that investigated the case applied charges of abuse of authority to Lee when indicting him, but cleared him of the charge of inciting insurrection.

As the criminal charges newly brought to trial by the joint special counsel team significantly overlap in factual relations with the matters already undergoing trial due to the previous special counsel's indictment, controversy over "double jeopardy" appears inevitable.

Previously, as its first attempt to secure custody after its launch, the joint special counsel team sought an arrest warrant for Lee in May on charges of inciting insurrection.

Kwon Young-bin, the Deputy Special Counsel in charge of the case, refuted criticism that it constituted double jeopardy by saying, "Those who do not know the law well are talking," but the court dismissed the warrant, stating, "There is room for debate over whether the crime of inciting insurrection is established."

(Photo: Yonhap News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.