By Hyonhee Shin
SEOUL (Reuters) – A South Korean court on Friday convicted a lawmaker who led an activist group for victims of Japanese wartime sexual exploitation of embezzling group funds and fined her nearly $12,000, while clearing her of other charges.
Yoon Mee-hyang was indicted in 2020 on several charges of fraud and embezzlement during her days as head of the group, which advocates for surviving “comfort women” – a Japanese euphemism for those forced to work in its wartime brothels during its 1910-45 colonisation of the Korean peninsula.
The Seoul Western District Court said Yoon embezzled at least 17 million won ($13,500) of group funds raised through donations.
“The organisation runs on the money from ordinary people … but the defendant failed to meet expectations,” the court said in its verdict, according to the News1 agency.
Yoon was fined 15 million won ($11,900) but the court acquitted her of other charges including illegally receiving government subsidies and coaxing a victim in failing health to donate her fortune to the group.
Yoon, who had apologised for causing controversy but denied the charges, smiled as she left the court.
“It proved my innocence on most of the unreasonable charges pressed by the prosecutors,” she told reporters, adding she would appeal against her conviction.
Prosecutors had called for a five-year jail sentence, which would have forced her to give up her seat in parliament.
Calls to the court and the advocacy group known as Jungdaehyup, or the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, went unanswered.
Yoon’s case threatened to damage the campaign on behalf of the surviving victims of the Japanese military.
The legacy of Japan’s colonial rule, especially the issues of sexual exploitation and forced labour, remain highly sensitive in South Korea and have for decades frayed ties with Japan.
(Reporting by Hyonhee Shin; Editing by Robert Birsel)
