Defamation lawsuit by former chairman of comfort women support group ”lost” in South Korea

South Korean lawmaker Yoon Mi-hyang, former member of the Democratic Party of Korea, filed a lawsuit against Professor Seo Min of Dankook University, who had accused her of misappropriating funeral expenses for comfort women.
Professor Seo filed a defamation lawsuit against the Japanese government and won the first trial, but lost the second trial. In 2021, he wrote on his blog, "The Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Japanese Military Sexual Slavery (KCR) is a former
Every time a comfort woman died, funeral expenses were collected from citizens, but the hospital in question never received any of the money. Despite this, the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery pretends to have paid the funeral expenses.
Yoon, former chairman of the Korean Council for Justice and Relations, responded, "Professor Seo seriously damaged his own reputation by writing obvious lies that were not even included in the prosecution's appeal.
On July 1st of last year, the court ruled in favor of Yoon, but on the 14th of this month, the court overturned the first-instance ruling and ruled in favor of Professor Seo.
The court ruled that "Most of the money collected by former lawmaker Yoon under the pretext of 'funeral expenses for former comfort women' in a related criminal case was used for purposes unrelated to providing comfort to the bereaved families and supporting the funerals."
"In fact, most of the funeral expenses raised by Rep. Yoon were not used for their intended purposes. This is an important part of the fact that it is not consistent with the objective facts," he said.
Yoon was indicted on eight charges in September 2020 after allegations of embezzling funds for comfort women were brought up, and was released from the National Diet in November last year.
The Supreme Court sentenced him to one year in prison with three years of probation.