Supreme Court Upholds Guilty Verdict for Former Samsung Electro-Mechanics Advisor Woojae Lim in 'Elderly Woman Confinement Case'

Involvement in Shaman Partner’s Crime Last April
One-Year Prison Term Suspended for Two Years Confirmed

The Supreme Court has dismissed the appeal filed by Woojae Lim, former advisor at Samsung Electro-Mechanics, who was indicted in connection with the illegal detention and assault of an elderly woman in her 80s. Lim is the ex-husband of Boo-jin Lee, CEO of Hotel Shilla.

Woojae Lim, Former Advisor at Samsung Electro-Mechanics. The Asia Business Daily DB

According to the legal community on September 21, the third division of the Supreme Court (Presiding Justice: Sookyeon Lee) finalized its decision on September 15, rejecting Lim's appeal and upholding the previous ruling: one year in prison, suspended for two years, on the charge of aggravated unlawful detention resulting in injury.

Lim was indicted as an accessory to filing a false missing person report in relation to the unlawful detention and assault of Ms. A, a woman in her 80s, which took place in April last year in Yeoncheon-gun, Gyeonggi Province. Lim’s then-girlfriend, a female shaman in her 40s known as Ms. A, reached a breaking point in a long-standing conflict with a mountain ginseng harvester over a land dispute and the withdrawal of legal complaints. She took the harvester’s mother, also in her 80s, as a hostage, and deceived the harvester’s son, Mr. B, in his 20s, by telling him, "Your real mother was beaten to death because of your grandmother and your aunt." This manipulation led Mr. B to participate in the crime.

Incited by Ms. A’s claims, Mr. B locked his biological grandmother in the house for six days and assaulted her using his fists and a fly swatter. The crime came to light when the grandmother managed to escape during a lapse in supervision and reported the incident to the police.

After the police investigation began to close in, Ms. A and Lim, gripped by a sense of extreme crisis, forced the victim’s granddaughter to write a fake suicide note, personally drove her in Lim’s car to a remote underpass, and handed her over to an accomplice to hide her.

They then had Mr. B, after successfully isolating the granddaughter, file a false missing person report with the police, claiming, “My younger sister disappeared after leaving a suicide note following a police interrogation.” The incident resulted in dozens of police officers and firefighters being deployed for three days to search surrounding hills and the local area, causing a significant waste of public resources.

In the first trial, Lim was sentenced to one year in prison and taken into immediate custody. However, the appellate court reduced his sentence to a suspended sentence, and he was released in June. The appellate court acknowledged that Lim assisted the crime, for example by transporting the victim’s granddaughter in his car, but determined he was an accessory rather than a joint principal in the filing of the false report; he did not personally participate in the false report, nor did he directly benefit from the crime, leading to the decision to suspend his sentence.

Meanwhile, Ms. B, the shaman and Lim’s former girlfriend who led the crime, had her sentence reduced from six years in the first trial to five years in the appellate court. Mr. C, the grandson of Ms. A and another accomplice, had his sentence reduced from three years in the first trial to two years and four months in the appellate court. All other accomplices either withdrew their appeals or had their cases dismissed, confirming their respective sentences.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.