OCA meddled in Japanese journalist's defamation case against Park
By Kim Rahn
Tatsuya Kato
The administrative body of the judicial branch had been aware of the verdict on a Japanese journalist accused of defaming then President Park Geun-hye even before a local court made a ruling, according to a report, Friday.
The report came amid escalating suspicions that the Office of Court Administration (OCA) under former Supreme Court Chief Justice Yang Sung-tae allegedly meddled in trials in favor of the government.
On Nov. 16, 2015, about a month before the Seoul Central District Court ruled on a defamation charge against Tatsuya Kato, former Seoul bureau chief of the Sankei Shimbun, the OCA created a confidential document containing details of the ruling and the judge's comments presented as a “scenario,” according to the Hankook Ilbo, the sister paper of The Korea Times.
Kato was indicted the previous year for writing a column about a rumor that Park was with her former aide Chung Yoon-hoi for the first seven hours of April 16, 2014, during the critical moments of the ferry Sewol's sinking, suggesting the two were in a romantic relationship.
Chung was the former husband of Choi Soon-sil, Park's longtime confidant who was the central figure in the massive corruption scandal that led to Park's impeachment in late 2016. Chung and Choi's divorce was reported in May 2014.
The document allegedly contained what the ruling – to be made about a month later – would be: the column was “factually incorrect.”
It also “predicted” what the judge would say on the day of the trial, saying, “The judge will severely rebuke Kato for making a false report about a country's president without checking facts… to send a severe reprimand and warning messages… letting people know about the false facts through media reports.”
The OCA knew what the ruling would be, as the document said, “(although the column was factually incorrect,) a non-guilty verdict will be made inevitably according to the principle of the law.”
The trial on Dec. 17 was carried out according to the “scenario” related in the report.
Reading the ruling, the judge said Kato reported falsehoods but was acquitted of the charge because the column did not intend to defame Park and journalism should be protected under the freedom of expression.
Then he reprimanded Kato, saying, “The non-guilty verdict does not mean the column did not have any problems,” and “he ridiculed the President.” He also read eight columns Kato had written about Korea's politics and said he, as a Korean, could not agree with the Japanese journalist's point of view.
Around the time of the trial, the OCA was trying hard to achieve Yang's goal to create a new general court of appeals. So the prosecution suspects the OCA meddled in trials such as this one to win the President's favor.
It has been alleged that Yang planned to make a deal with Cheong Wa Dae to offer verdicts favorable to the government in high-profile and politically sensitive cases, in exchange for the creation of the new court body.