High court overturns acquittal of ex-PSS chief over phone data deletion

The Seoul High Court has overturned the acquittal of Park Jong-joon, the former head of the Presidential Security Service (PSS), who was accused of deleting secure phone data related to former President Yoon Suk Yeol and others following Yoon's declaration of martial law in 2024. The court sentenced Park to one year in prison for the destruction of evidence by erasing data from secure phones, overturning the lower court's decision that found him not guilty.

Park was indicted in December 2024 for allegedly using a remote logout function to delete data from secure phones belonging to Yoon, former National Intelligence Service official Hong Jang-won, and former Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency chief Kim Bong-sik. The special counsel's team had requested a three-year prison sentence for Park.

The appellate court emphasized it could not dismiss the possibility of Park's intent to destroy evidence when he deleted the secure phone data of Yoon, Hong, and Kim. Park has also been detained in another case, where he received a four-year prison sentence in January 2025 for obstructing investigators from executing a warrant to detain Yoon. The appellate court's ruling on that case is expected on October 28.