Court upholds jail term for former police chief

The Supreme Court yesterday upheld an eight-month jail term for a former national police chief, Cho Hyun-oh, for making defamatory remarks against the late President Roh Moo-hyun.

The nation’s highest court rejected Cho’s final appeal against a verdict handed down by two lower courts, saying that he posthumously defamed Roh by spreading false accusations without any evidence to back up his argument.

Commenting in a March 2010 meeting with police officials on the motive behind Roh’s suicide, Cho, who was then the commissioner of the National Police Agency, claimed that police had found large amounts of money in a bank account under a borrowed name the night before the former president leapt to his death.

Roh committed suicide a year after leaving office by jumping off a cliff behind his retirement home in Bongha Village, Gimhae, South Gyeongsang, in May 2009.

Roh’s family sued Cho for libel. A district court previously sentenced Cho to 10 months in prison, but an appeals court commuted his sentence to eight months.

BY PARK MIN-JE [enational@joongang.co.kr]