Rep. Kang Sam-jae Was Sentenced to 4 Years in Prison

Those who allegedly diverted some of the state intelligence agency`s budget to finance the election campaign of the then ruling New Korea Party (now known as the Grand National Party) in 1995-96 were convicted.

The Seoul District Court sentenced Rep. Kang Sam-jae of the Grand National Party(GNP), who was indicted without physical detaining, to four years in prison and fined him 73.1 billion won.

And Kim Ki-sop, former deputy director of the Agency for National Security Planning (NSP), now known as the National Intelligence Service, was given a five-year prison term and fined 12.5 billion won.

In its ruling, the court said that the accused neglected their duty of the strict execution of budget and the supervision of the execution as a public official and a lawmaker and diverted money from the intelligence agency to finance campaign activities of the New Korea Party to win the majority of seats.

However, the court only recognized 73.1 billion won Kang and Kim conspired to divert to help the 1996 general elections and 12.5 billion won Kim donated to the party for the 1995 local elections, saying that there is not enough evidence that the entire 119.7 billion won that went from the NSP`s account to the New Korea Party was all from the national budget.

The court said, "Kang should have put the public`s interest over his party`s interest. However, now he is only arguing that what he did was a kind of political practice, though wrongful, rather than accept that he is guilty." However, the court did not go as far as to keep him in custody after considering that the National Assembly is at a session.

The court also said that Kim made people wonder the reason why there is the NSP and contributed a lot to damaging people`s trust in a government organization.

For Kang and Kim, prosecutors asked for nine years in prison each on charges that they illegally helped the then ruling New Korea Party with 119.7 billion won in the NSP budget, in the run-up to the 1995 local elections and 1996 general elections.

Responding to the court`s ruling, Kang said that he would appeal the ruling immediately because he did not use the NSP budget for his own party.

Meanwhile, according to investigation records on the case, as many as 203 then lawmakers, a figure much higher than 180 lawmakers in the 2001 investigation results, received financial support. The total amount that they received proved to be 53.3 billion won. By person, Rep. Kang Sam-jae used 1.75 billion won, the highest amount, and after the general elections in 1996, an additional 12 politicians received money from the state intelligence agency.

Jin-Kyun Kil leon@donga.com