Pastor Jeon Kwang-hoon. [Newsis]
Pastor Jeon Kwang-hoon. [Newsis]

Pastor Jeon Kwang-hoon of Sarang Jeil Church has been referred to prosecutors on charges of spreading false information about President Lee Jae Myung's youth.

The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency Metropolitan Investigation Unit's public crimes unit referred Jeon to the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office on Thursday without seeking his detention, on charges of defamation through false statements under the Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection, according to Yonhap.

Jeon is accused of damaging Lee's reputation by spreading false claims on his YouTube channel on two occasions — July 5 last year and May 10 this year.

In the first instance, Jeon cited remarks made at a press conference by Morse Tan — a Korean American formerly known as Dan Hyeon-myeong who served as a professor at Liberty University in the United States — and claimed on his YouTube channel that Lee and others had committed sexual assault near the Andong Dam. He also suggested that Lee had served time in a juvenile detention facility and, as a result, had been unable to graduate from regular middle and high schools, forcing him to pass a qualification exam instead.

Then on May 10 this year, during a Sunday service at Sarang Jeil Church broadcast live on YouTube, Jeon claimed that Lee had not graduated from middle or high school, had taken a qualification exam while in a juvenile detention facility, and had somehow transferred into Chung-Ang University.

Police had been investigating a complaint filed by the Peace Tree Christian Restoration Center regarding those remarks when they separately identified and began investigating the sexual assault-related statements from July 5 last year.

Regarding the charges, Jeon denied wrongdoing during a police probe in August, saying he had misspoken "juvenile detention facility" when he meant "juvenile factory worker," and that the sexual assault remarks were simply a citation of Tan's statements.

Police concluded that the statements were false, citing the fact that Lee has no record of being referred to a juvenile court. They also determined that intent and a purpose to defame were evident, given that the facts could have been verified through publicly available information, and referred Jeon to prosecutors accordingly.


klee@heraldcorp.com