Seoul, April 29
The South Korea's Supreme Court said on Tuesday that it will rule on the election law violation case of the Democratic Party (DP) presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung later this week.
The ruling will be made at 3 pm Thursday, the court said, just four days after Lee won the DP's primary for the June 3 presidential election.
The announcement comes after prosecutors appealed a high court ruling last month that acquitted Lee of lying as a presidential candidate during the 2022 election and overturned a lower court's sentence of a suspended prison term.
The case has posed a major legal hurdle for Lee, who is considered the front-runner in the upcoming presidential election.
The human rights lawyer-turned-politician Lee won 89.77 per cent of all votes cast in the party's primary, securing a majority of the votes needed to avoid a runoff. Lee has put economic recovery as his top priority and voiced openness for talks with North Korea.
This marks the highest figure ever recorded in a presidential primary among DP-affiliated candidates since South Korea's democratisation in 1987.