The mother-in-law of Yoon Suk Yeol, President of South Korea, Mrs. Choi Eun-soon (77), who was serving a one-year prison sentence for forging a bank balance certificate, is to be released on parole after 299 days of imprisonment.
According to the legal community on the 14th, the Ministry of Justice will release 650 people, including Mrs. Choi, at 10 am the day before Buddha’s Birthday (15th). Before this, the Ministry of Justice’s Parole Review Committee unanimously deemed Mrs. Choi ‘eligible’ for parole after conducting a review on the 8th.
The next day, Minister of Justice Park Sung Jae approved the committee’s decision, allowing Mrs. Choi to be released 67 days earlier than her sentence’s end date of July 20th. Mrs. Choi was sentenced to one year in prison for charges including forging a bank balance certificate to appear as though approximately 34.9 billion won ($31 million) was deposited in a savings bank during the process of purchasing land in Seongnam City, Gyeonggi Province in 2013. After being detained in court following the appellate trial on July 21st last year, Mrs. Choi has been serving her sentence at Seoul Eastern Detention Center, fulfilling over 80% of her term and meeting the conditions for parole. Her correctional record is also reported to be not bad. Furthermore, her being in her 70s also seems to have influenced the decision for parole.
Previously, the review committee had decided to defer the review of Mrs. Choi’s parole last month and deemed her ineligible in February.