When does money a National Assembly member receives become a bribe? Supreme Court Decision 97Do2609 on an overall quid pro quo relationship with legislative activity

Question

Article 129(1) of the Criminal Act punishes a public official or an arbitrator who receives, demands or promises a bribe in connection with his or her duties, and Article 2(1)(i) of the Act on the Aggravated Punishment, etc. of Specific Crimes, which the decision cites alongside Article 129, aggravates that punishment according to the amount received. The question is what makes a receipt of money duty-related: whether the money must correspond to a specified official act, whether a particular request must be shown, and whether money taken under the name of political funds or election funds can still be a bribe.

Decision 97Do2609 raises that question for Defendant D, a member of the National Assembly. Co-defendant C gave him money around March 1993, around December 1993 and around March 1996, asking him to help N Group through his legislative activity and to persuade fellow members of the same party not to raise issues about N Group in the National Assembly. The defence argued that there was no duty-relatedness and no quid pro quo relationship, and that some of the money was in truth pure political funds.

Material to check

The statutes are Article 129 of the Criminal Act, under which a public official or an arbitrator who receives, demands or promises a bribe in connection with his or her duties is punished, and Article 132 of the Criminal Act, on a public official who uses his or her position to receive a bribe for brokering a matter belonging to another public official's duties. The decision also cites Article 2(1)(i) of the Act on the Aggravated Punishment, etc. of Specific Crimes, whose current text, where the amount received is one hundred million Korean won or more, imposes life imprisonment or imprisonment of ten years or more, with a fine of two to five times the amount received added under paragraph 2.

The decisions are the decision, Decision 97Do2609 (26 December 1997), and the precedents it cites on this point: Decision 96Do3377 (17 April 1997, Grand Bench), whose published holdings deal with the scope of a President's duties and with the relation between political funds and bribes, and Decisions 96Do3378 and 80Do1373, named by number only, which the decision refers to when stating the rules on the protected legal interest of the bribery offence and on the reach of the word 'duties'. Decision 97Do2609 upheld the Seoul High Court's judgment 97No1262, 1813 (24 September 1997) by dismissing the defendants' appeals and the prosecution's appeal as to Defendant C.

Possible readings

Read with Decision 96Do3378, which Decision 97Do2609 cites, the bribery offence protects the fairness of the execution of official duties and society's trust in it, and takes the non-purchasability of official performance as its direct legal interest. If the official's duties and the receipt of money stand in an overall quid pro quo relationship, the offence of receiving a bribe is established. There is no particular need to consider whether there was a request or whether each individual official act stands in a quid pro quo relationship, and the official act need not be specified.

For the word 'duties', Decision 97Do2609, referring to Decision 80Do1373, states that it covers not only the duties an official handles under laws and regulations, but also acts closely related to those duties and acts customarily or in fact handled by the official. On that footing the decision states that where a member of the National Assembly is given money standing in an overall and comprehensive quid pro quo relationship with legislative activity as the exercise of his or her functions, the receipt is to be regarded as connected with the member's duties even if the official act it corresponds to cannot be identified. The decision adds that although a member's intervention in another member's official act is not itself the member's official act, urging and persuading a fellow member to take a certain course of legislative activity on a certain bill, as an extension of the member's own power to deliberate and vote on bills, is an act closely related to the exercise of that power, and receiving money in connection with it also constitutes receiving a bribe.

A third reading concerns money taken in other names. Decision 97Do2609, citing Decision 96Do3377, states that the receipt of money under the name of political funds, election funds and the like does not lose its character as a bribe so long as it has the substance of a quid pro quo for the official acts of a politician who is a public official. The label put on the payment therefore does not decide the question; the substance of the relationship does.

What the decisions held

Decision 97Do2609 rejected the argument of Defendant D's counsel on these points and affirmed the finding of fact below. The appellate court had accepted that Co-defendant C gave Defendant D money around March 1993, around December 1993 and around March 1996, together with a request that he help N Group through legislative activity and that he keep fellow members of the same party from taking N Group to task, so that N Group matters would not be raised in the National Assembly. The Supreme Court held the appellate court right in finding that, as a member of the National Assembly with his own powers, Defendant D could exercise those powers to N Group's benefit or so as to avoid detriment to it, even if his committee, such as the Defence Committee or the Administration Committee, had nothing to do with N Group, and that the money therefore stood in an overall and comprehensive quid pro quo relationship with his official acts or with acts closely related to his duties.

The Court added that Co-defendant C did not designate any particular official act in making the request, so that the official act corresponding to the payment could not be identified, and that this made no difference to the conclusion. It further held that even if some part of the money genuinely had the character of pure political funds, since the payments stood in a quid pro quo relationship with the duties of Defendant D as a member of the National Assembly, that did not obstruct treating them as bribes. The Court found no error in these findings and no misunderstanding of the law of bribery.

The Court dismissed the defendants' appeals and the prosecution's appeal as to Defendant C, and ordered parts of the detention after the appeals to be credited to the principal sentences: 80 days each for Defendants A and C, and 10 days for Defendant D.

Points left open

The decision states that money with the substance of a quid pro quo keeps its bribe character whatever name it is given, but it does not set out criteria for telling such a payment apart from a genuine political contribution that has no quid pro quo substance at all. Where a payment is partly political in character and partly a quid pro quo, the decision says the bribe character is not lost, but it does not say how the two elements are to be separated or measured.

The decision states the rule for public officials in general terms and applies it to a member of the National Assembly, including the urging and persuading of fellow members on a bill as an act closely related to one's own deliberative and voting powers. It does not say how the overall quid pro quo relationship between duties and payments is to be established on the evidence in a given case, nor which further acts count as closely related to an official's duties beyond the one it describes; those questions are left to fact-finding in the individual case.

When to reconsider

We revisit this brief if the Constitutional Court or the Supreme Court sets a boundary between genuine political funds and bribes in substance, if Article 129 of the Criminal Act or Article 2 of the Act on the Aggravated Punishment, etc. of Specific Crimes is amended, or if a later decision sets out how the overall quid pro quo relationship is to be proved on the evidence.

Statutes referred to

• 형법 제37조, 제129조, 제132조, 제52조, 제356조, 제347조, 제33조, 제355조
• 특정경제범죄가중처벌등에관한법률 제7조, 제3조
• 특정범죄가중처벌등에관한법률 제2조
• 형사소송법 제254조
• 상호신용금고법 제39조

Decisions referred to

• 대법원 1997. 12. 26. 선고 97도2609 판결 · Decision ledger
• 대법원 1997. 4. 17. 선고 96도3377 전원합의체 판결

Verification status

The texts read for this brief were all read at the National Law Information Center (law.go.kr) on 24 October 2026: the decision in its published case descriptions, holdings and full reasons, and the cited articles in their current text. The precedents whose published holdings appear in the texts read for this brief were read in those holdings; the other precedents are named only by their numbers.