재벌그룹 회장에 대한 집행유예의 선고

Suspended sentence on Chaebol owner: The concept of a community service order including problematic issues over concurrent offense punishment provisions

The original ruling took into consideration the fact that the accused was a Chaebol owner and applied the concurrent offence punishment provisions and the discretionary sentence reduction system to lower the inferior limit of the penalty, and passed a suspended sentence. In order to divert public criticism, the original ruling also ordered a huge payment as a social contribution fund as a means of a community service order according to article 62-2 of the penal code. But the Supreme Court construed the concept of a community service order in a restrictive manner as ‘work or manual labor that can be imposed by the hour up to 500 hours. As a result of this construction the Supreme Court reversed and remanded the original judgment that ordered the payment of a social contribution fund as a community service order. The original court maintained the suspended sentence by imposing a 300 hour community service instead of the original social contribution fund payment. Consequently the fairness of the examination of the offence was greatly impaired by lowering the inferior limit of the penalty to 3 years in a case in which the accused was proven guilty of 11 separate offences including one of which the penalty is stipulated as ‘life sentence or imprisonment for more than 5 years. This ruling disclosed the problematic issues of the concurrent offence punishment provisions and the discretionary sentence reduction system that grant judges excessive discretion on weighing penalties. It is also legislatively meaningful that the case raised issues on introducing new forms of ‘suspended sentence conditional orders such as fund payment orders or damage recovery orders.