Military Prosecutors Acquitted Again on Appeal in "Jung-Hoon Park Arrest Warrant Falsification" Chae Case

Court: "A warrant request is a document containing judgments and claims... Difficult to regard as a false official document"

Military prosecutors, who were indicted for writing false information in the arrest warrant for Jung-Hoon Park, former commander of the Marine Corps Investigation Unit (then Colonel, now Brigadier General), who investigated the death of Private First Class Chae, were acquitted of the main charges again at the appellate court.

Jung-Hoon Park, former commander of the Marine Corps Investigation Unit. Photo by Yonhap News Agency

On September 11, the 7th Criminal Division of the Seoul High Court (Presiding Judge Koo Hoe-geun) upheld the not-guilty verdict for Lieutenant Colonel Kim Min-jeong, who had been indicted for making and using false official documents and for abuse of authority leading to detention. Major Yeom Bo-hyun, who was tried on the same charges, was also acquitted. For violating the Act on Testimony and Appraisal at the National Assembly, Major Yeom was fined 10 million won, the same outcome as the first trial. The court stated that, as in the initial trial, it was difficult to see their inclusion of false information in the arrest warrant request for Park as intentional. The court further explained, "A request for an arrest warrant is a document in which the prosecutor presents judgments and claims regarding the investigation, and thus it is difficult to regard it as an official document with evidentiary function."

These individuals, who were serving at the Ministry of National Defense Prosecutor’s Office, were suspected of including false facts in the arrest warrant request for Park in August 2023, as they investigated him for insubordination after he handed over the investigation records on the death of Marine Private First Class Chae to the police. The warrant request described former President Yoon Suk Yeol’s anger and external pressure on the investigation, as claimed by Park, as “delusions,” and also included alleged details that Park deleted mobile phone records and coerced investigators into writing fact-confirmation statements.

The special investigation team alleged that by submitting a warrant based on false statements to the court, these prosecutors exercised an official document, and that they also unlawfully detained Park for six hours and 46 minutes between his pre-arrest interrogation and the court's decision to reject the warrant on the alleged charge of abuse of authority by detention. In the initial trial, the main charges against them resulted in acquittals, while Major Yeom was fined 10 million won for failing to appear at the National Assembly’s audit in October 2024.

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