{"id":2000126188,"date":"2026-09-17T08:34:42","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T06:34:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/?p=2000126188"},"modified":"2026-09-17T08:46:47","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T06:46:47","slug":"s-koreas-ex-president-yoon-indicted-in-luxury-bag-scandal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/s-koreas-ex-president-yoon-indicted-in-luxury-bag-scandal\/","title":{"rendered":"S. Korea&#8217;s ex-president Yoon indicted in luxury bag scandal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Seoul Central District Prosecutors&#8217; Office formally charged Yoon with failing to fulfill his official reporting duty under the Improper Solicitation and Graft Act, despite knowing that his wife, Kim Keon-hee, had accepted high-priced gifts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Kim was accused of accepting a luxury handbag valued at 3 million won (2,170 U.S. dollars), a cosmetics set worth 1.79 million won and premium liquor worth 400,000 won from a pastor between June and September 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The prosecution initially dropped all charges against the couple in October 2024, but the case was reopened under a special counsel probe targeting Yoon&#8217;s wife.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A special police task force in charge of independent counsel referrals forwarded the case back to the prosecution with a recommendation for indictment in June.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yoon was sentenced to life in prison in February for the insurrection stemming from his martial law declaration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The emergency martial law was declared by Yoon on the night of Dec. 3, 2024, but it was revoked hours later by the National Assembly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He was indicted under detention in January 2025 as a suspected ringleader of the insurrection, becoming the first sitting president to be arrested and indicted. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1462\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.igihe.com\/en\/2026\/09\/a9801.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2000126191\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">South Korea&#8217;s former President Yoon Suk-yeol has been indicted on charges of violating the anti-graft law. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>South Korea&#8217;s former President Yoon Suk-yeol was indicted on charges of violating the anti-graft law, following additional investigations into a luxury bag scandal involving his wife, according to Yonhap news agency on Thursday. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2000126191,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[101],"byline":[235],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-2000126188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-justice","tag-internationl","byline-xinhua"],"bylines":[{"id":235,"name":"Xinhua","slug":"xinhua","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":80}],"contributors":[{"id":235,"name":"Xinhua","slug":"xinhua","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":80}],"featured_image":{"id":2000126191,"url":"https:\/\/cdn.igihe.com\/en\/2026\/09\/a9801.jpg","alt":"","caption":"South Korea's former President Yoon Suk-yeol has been indicted on charges of violating the anti-graft law. ","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":1920,"height":1462,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/cdn.igihe.com\/en\/2026\/09\/a9801.jpg","width":1920,"height":1462},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/cdn.igihe.com\/en\/2026\/09\/a9801.jpg","width":1920,"height":1462},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/cdn.igihe.com\/en\/2026\/09\/a9801.jpg","width":1920,"height":1462},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/cdn.igihe.com\/en\/2026\/09\/a9801.jpg","width":1920,"height":1462},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/cdn.igihe.com\/en\/2026\/09\/a9801.jpg","width":1920,"height":1462}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2000126188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2000126188"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2000126188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2000126195,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2000126188\/revisions\/2000126195"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000126191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2000126188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2000126188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2000126188"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=2000126188"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=2000126188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}