An appeals court on Tuesday increased the sentence for former first lady Kim Keon Hee from 20 months to four years in prison on corruption charges.
The Seoul High Court handed down the sentence during a hearing that was televised live, after finding her partially guilty of involvement in a stock price manipulation scheme and guilty of accepting luxury gifts from the Unification Church.
It acquitted her, however, of receiving free opinion poll results from a self-proclaimed power broker, upholding the lower court's ruling.
Special counsel Min Joong-ki's team had sought a 15-year prison term for the wife of former President Yoon Suk Yeol after indicting her on charges of violating the Capital Markets Act, the Political Funds Act and a law on the acceptance of bribes for mediation.
The team accused her of manipulating the stock price of Deutsch Motors, a BMW dealer in South Korea, to make 810 million won (US$549,000) in illegal profits from 2010-12, receiving free opinion poll results from the power broker ahead of her husband's 2022 presidential election, and accepting two Chanel bags and a Graff diamond necklace from a former Unification Church official requesting favors.
