South Korea: The former president of South Korea Mr. Lee Myung-bak has received a presidential pardon, which has cut short his 17-year prison sentence for corruption.

Mr. Yoon Seok-yeol, president of South Korea, issued the pardon for the former president as part of the East Asian country’s customary mass pardons around national holidays.

“Mr. Lee was on a list of more than 1,300 people who received special pardons from the perspective of broad national unity through reconciliation, tolerance, and consideration,” Mr. Han Dong-hoon, justice minister of South Korea, stated after a Cabinet meeting with president Mr. Yoon Suk-yeol.

The former Hyundai CEO-turned-president was charged with 16 criminal allegations in 2018 and sentenced in 2020.

In 2018, Mr. Lee was found guilty of making slush funds worth millions of dollars and accepting bribes from Samsung Electronics in return for a presidential pardon for its late chairman, Mr. Lee Kun-hee, who was jailed for tax evasion.

The Supreme Court upheld a 17-year sentence for the ex-president in October 2020, sending him back to prison after a lower court had granted his release on bail.

Mr. Lee, aged 81, was granted temporary release in June 2022, after prosecutors found that the former president had serious health issues.

Since the democratisation of the country in 1987, all but one of South Korea’s elected former presidents have been convicted of white-collar crimes or have seen an immediate family member convicted of the crimes.

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