Appellate court reduces ex-PSS chief's sentence to 3 years

SEOUL, Oct. 28 (Yonhap) -- Park Jong-joon, former chief of the Presidential Security Service (PSS), was sentenced by an appellate court Wednesday to three years in prison for blocking investigators from executing a warrant to detain former President Yoon Suk Yeol last year.

The sentence was reduced from the four years that a lower court handed down in July.

Park and other former PSS officials were indicted for obstructing investigators' attempt to execute an arrest warrant for Yoon at the presidential residence in January 2025 over his imposition of martial law.

The Seoul High Court said it reduced Park's sentence because he did not appear to have actively engaged in physical confrontations with officials seeking to execute the arrest warrant. It also said his resignation on Jan. 7 last year could be interpreted as an acknowledgment of responsibility for the resulting confusion and conflict.

However, the high court upheld a five-year prison sentence for Kim Seong-hoon, former deputy chief of the PSS, saying he played a key role in organizing resistance to the execution of the warrant.

It also sentenced Lee Kwang-woo, former chief of the PSS' bodyguard division, to two years in prison in the same case, while upholding a one-year suspended prison term for Kim Shin, a former PSS official in charge of security for the president's family.