Judge’s Room Salon Case Reassigned Over Concerns About Perceived Fairness

A case involving Seoul Northern District Court Chief Judge Ji Gui-yeon has been reassigned after the judge who initially received it raised concerns that their shared judicial training background could create doubts about the trial’s fairness.

The Seoul Central District Court moved Ji’s case on charges of violating the Improper Solicitation and Graft Act from the fourth single-judge criminal division to the 10th single-judge criminal division on Sept. 8. The case had been filed and assigned to Chief Judge Park Kang-gyun four days earlier.

Park and Ji belong to the 31st class of South Korea’s Judicial Research and Training Institute. Park asked the court to reassign the case, saying the relationship could lead a third party to misunderstand the trial’s impartiality. The court accepted that there were grounds for reassignment and used a random electronic allocation process to assign the case to Chief Judge Lee Jae-wook, a member of the institute’s 34th class.

The Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials indicted Ji without detention on Sept. 4. Prosecutors allege that, around August 2023, he received entertainment worth more than 1 million won on one occasion during a drinking gathering with two lawyers at a room salon in Cheongdam-dong, Seoul.

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There is a concern that a third party could misunderstand the fairness of the trial because of the relationship between classmates at the Judicial Research and Training Institute.