Yang Sung-tae (; born 26 January 1948) is a South Korean jurist and the 15th

Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Korea The chief justice of the Supreme Court of Korea () is the chief judge of the Supreme Court of Korea. As presiding judge of the grand bench composed of two-thirds of fourteen Supreme Court justices, the chief represents the Supreme Court of Kor ...

Early life and education

Born in

Busan Busan (), officially Busan Metropolitan City, is South Korea's second list of cities in South Korea by population, most populous city after Seoul, with a population of over 3.3 million as of 2024. Formerly romanized as Pusan, it is the economi ...

, Yang received a

LL.B. A Bachelor of Laws (; LLB) is an undergraduate law degree offered in most common law countries as the primary law degree and serves as the first professional qualification for legal practitioners. This degree requires the study of core legal subje ...

from

Seoul National University Seoul National University (SNU; ) is a public university, public research university in Seoul, South Korea. It is one of the SKY (universities), SKY universities and a part of the Flagship Korean National Universities. The university's main c ...

in 1970. He began his law career in 1975 as a judge of Seoul Civil District Court, and afterwards served as a judge in several nationwide courts. He also taught as a professor at the Judicial Research and Training Institute. He was later appointed as the Chief Judge of Busan District Court and Patent Court.

Career

During the

1997 Asian financial crisis The 1997 Asian financial crisis gripped much of East Asia, East and Southeast Asia during the late 1990s. The crisis began in Thailand in July 1997 before spreading to several other countries with a ripple effect, raising fears of a worldwide eco ...

, Yang, as the senior presiding judge of the Bankruptcy Chambers of Seoul Central District Court, ordered court supervision of

bankrupt Bankruptcy is a legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts. In most jurisdictions, bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the de ...

companies based on fairness and transparency. As the Vice Minister of the National Court Administration, he played a role in reforming criminal procedure. In February 2005, he was named a

Supreme Court Justice The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest-ranking judicial body in the United States. Its membership, as set by the Judiciary Act of 1869, consists of the chief justice of the United States and eight associate justices, any six of ...

and served until February 2011. On September 25, 2011, he was inaugurated as the 15th

. On September 24, 2017, his term as Chief Justice ended and a successor was named by President

Moon Jae-in Moon Jae-in (, ; born January 24, 1953) is a South Korean politician and former lawyer who served as the 12th president of South Korea from 2017 to 2022. Before his presidency, he served as the senior secretary for civil affairs and the Chief ...

Charges and arrest

By September 2018 his actions as chief justice were under investigation by the current chief justice. On January 24 he was arrested on the count of 40 charges including abuse of his authority as a judge as part of the political scandal that resulted in the

impeachment of Park Geun-hye On 9 December 2016, Park Geun-hye, the president of South Korea, was impeached as the culmination of a political scandal involving interventions to the presidency from her aide, Choi Soon-sil. 234 members of the 300-member National Assembly v ...

, the president of Korea during the time he was the chief justice. Instead of Yang, a judge from a district court was appointed as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and several civil lawsuits were detained in the process. The former Chief of Justice's actions increased skepticism about the independence of the judiciary.

Early life and education

Career

Charges and arrest

References

Further reading