SEOUL, Kim Yong, a close aide to opposition leader Lee Jae-myung, was granted bail and discharged from prison on Wednesday while facing appeals trial in jail on bribery and illegal political fund charges connected to a high-profile development corruption scandal.
The bail approved by the Seoul High Court came 160 days after Kim, former deputy head of the main opposition Democratic Party’s Institute for Democracy think tank, was incarcerated upon a district court’s conviction of him in November for bribery and unlawful political funding.
Kim was indicted with physical detention in late 2022 on charges of having received illegal political funds worth 847 million won (US$620,740) in 2021 from real estate developers at the center of the corruption-ridden development project to build apartment complexes in the Daejang-dong district of Seongnam, south of Seoul.
Charges against him also included pocketing 190 million won in bribes from 2013-14 from a former senior official from Seongnam’s city development corpor
ation in return for business favors.
While the trial by a district court was under way, he had initially been granted bail in May last year but was re-incarcerated after the court convicted and sentenced him to five years in prison in November.