[Breaking News] Jo Hee-yeon, Superintendent of Education, Sentenced to 1 Year and 6 Months in Prison with Suspension... Loss of Superintendent Position Confirmed

Supreme Court Confirms Suspended Prison Sentence

The suspended sentence for a prison term was confirmed for Cho Hee-yeon, the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education Superintendent, who was indicted on charges of preferentially hiring five dismissed teachers, including four teachers from the Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union (Jeon-gyo-jo).

According to the Local Education Autonomy Act (Education Autonomy Act) and the Public Official Election Act, which stipulate automatic dismissal for those sentenced to imprisonment or higher and whose sentence is finalized, Superintendent Cho lost his position.

Cho Hee-yeon, Superintendent of the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, is holding a press conference marking the 10th anniversary of his inauguration on July 2nd at the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education in Jongno-gu, Seoul. Photo by Kang Jin-hyung aymsdream@

On the 29th, the Supreme Court's 3rd Division (Presiding Justice Oh Seok-jun) dismissed Superintendent Cho's appeal in the final trial on charges of abuse of authority and violation of the National Public Officials Act, confirming the original court ruling of 1 year and 6 months imprisonment with a 2-year suspended sentence.

The court stated the reason for dismissing Superintendent Cho's appeal was that "there was no error in the original court's judgment such as failing to conduct necessary hearings, violating the rules of logic and experience beyond the limits of free evaluation of evidence, misunderstanding or omitting the legal principles regarding the specification of charges, the establishment of abuse of authority and violation of the National Public Officials Act, joint perpetration, the relationship between offenses, or applying unconstitutional laws."

The Supreme Court also dismissed or rejected Superintendent Cho's request for a constitutional review of the criminal law provisions related to abuse of authority.

Superintendent Cho was indicted for abusing personnel authority from October to December 2018 with the purpose of appointing five dismissed teachers from Jeon-gyo-jo, compelling supervisors and others to carry out a special recruitment process disguised as a public competitive examination, which they were not obligated to do.

Among the five specially hired by Superintendent Cho, four were teachers from Jeon-gyo-jo who had been automatically retired in November 2012 after being convicted with a fine of 2.5 million won for violating the Education Autonomy Act due to illegal election campaigning related to the 2008 superintendent election. The remaining one was a teacher who had been automatically retired in October 2003 after being convicted with a 10-month prison sentence with a 2-year suspended sentence for violating the Public Official Election Act due to negative expressions about a specific party candidate in the 2002 presidential election.

Investigations revealed that Superintendent Cho ordered such preferential hiring in the second half of 2017 at the request of a certain branch of Jeon-gyo-jo. In particular, despite opposition from supervisors and public officials in the approval line of the special recruitment process, he pushed forward the illegal preferential hiring through his secretary-general A, who was not directly related to the hiring work.

Earlier, the first and second trial courts judged that although Superintendent Cho disguised the process as a public competition, he actually abused his authority to carry out illegal and unfair acts.

A, who received reports related to the special hiring of these dismissed teachers under Superintendent Cho's instructions and made calls to interview committee members, was also confirmed to have received a 10-month prison sentence with a 2-year suspended sentence on this day.