Prosecution Lists 11 Lawmakers in Unification Church Split Donation Case
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It has been confirmed that the indictment of Song Kwang-seok, former chairman of the Unification Church-affiliated Universal Peace Federation (UPF), who is accused of “split donations” to the political sphere, includes the names of 11 current and former lawmakers from both ruling and opposition parties.
According to the legal community on the 10th, the prosecution included in Song’s indictment the content that he “was in charge of soliciting lawmakers and sponsored politicians ahead of the ‘World Summit 2020’ event in February 2020.”
According to the indictment, Song transferred 1,000,000 Korean won to the support committee accounts of former lawmakers Lee Chan-yeol of the Bareunmirae Party and Yoo Seong-yeop of the Democratic Peace Party on January 3, 2019. He then sent 1,000,000 Korean won each to the support committee accounts of Yoon Sang-hyun, a People Power Party lawmaker, on January 10, and Chung Dong-young, then a Democratic Peace Party lawmaker, on January 11.
On the 16th of the same month, he donated 3,000,000 Korean won to the support committee of then-lawmaker Chung Sang-moon, who had completed his term as Speaker of the 20th National Assembly and rejoined the Democratic Party of Korea. Later, Song requested the Unification Church’s world headquarters to cover a total of 7,000,000 Korean won in donations and expenses related to this, and the prosecution believes that former world headquarters chief Yun Young-ho reimbursed the amount.
The prosecution also believes that Song deposited 1,000,000 Korean won each into the support committee accounts of six other lawmakers, including former Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker Shim Jae-kwon, People Power Party lawmaker Na Kyung-won, Jung Yang-seok, Kang Seok-ho, Lee Jong-gul, and Kim Du-kwan, using UPF funds around January 2019.
The prosecution suspects that Song colluded with former chief Yun, Chairman Han Hak-ja, former chief secretary Jeong Won-ju, and others to donate Unification Church-related funds as political funds, and has applied charges of violating the Political Funds Act. The Political Funds Act prohibits donating political funds using funds related to corporations or organizations, or reimbursing political funds donated by individuals. However, the indictment does not specify whether the 11 current and former lawmakers from both parties who were the recipients of the donations were aware that the funds were from Unification Church-related organizations.
Content retrieved from: https://www.chosun.com/english/national-en/2026/02/10/N2JS265YDZFM5J62P3PQN5LLMQ/.
