Sentence cut for police officer involved in spy agency scandal

SEOUL, Nov. 28 (Yonhap) -- A Seoul court on Friday commuted the prison sentence for a senior police officer convicted of destroying computer evidence related to the national spy agency's alleged meddling in the 2012 presidential election.

In June, the Seoul Central District Court sentenced the police inspector surnamed Park to nine months in jail for deleting computer files at the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency (SMPA) ahead of a prosecution raid in May 2013.

The court said the 36-year-old inspector did this to botch prosecutors' attempt at determining whether the police tried to soft-pedal their investigation into the alleged electioneering by the National Intelligence Service (NIS).

Park had been kept in custody since pending an appellate trial.

Overturning the ruling, an appeals court reduced Park's sentence to nine months in prison with a two-year stay of execution, saying the extent to which Park deleted the files was relatively insignificant.

"Park's crime is serious in that it hampered the function of the state's judiciary," Judge Seong Su-jae said. "But he spent a relatively short amount of time trying to delete the files and did not delete extensively."

The judge added that the nine-month prison term may have been too severe for Park, "considering that the case has been more or less resolved and that his crime was not part of a systematic, premeditated one orchestrated by the police."

Earlier this year, a Seoul appeals court acquitted the now former head of the SMPA, Kim Yong-pan, of charges that he impeded a police probe into the election-meddling scandal.

Charges against Kim and Park were brought to attention after Kwon Eun-hee, a lead investigator on the case at the time, claimed that she could not fully look into the case due to pressure from her superiors, including Kim.

In June, however, the Seoul High Court said Kwon's testimony lacked credibility and delivered the non-guilty verdict to Kim.

In early September, the Seoul district court also found the head of the NIS at the time of last year's scandal, Won Sei-hoon, not guilty of intervening in the 2012 election.

He, however, was found guilty of "meddling in local politics," and is currently appealing the verdict.

sojungpark@yna.co.kr
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