Kim Keon Hee, the wife of former president of South Korea Yoon Suk Yeol, has been arrested on multiple corruption charges, marking a remarkable moment in the country’s history where a former president and the former first lady are both behind bars.
A Seoul Central District Court approved Kim Keon Hee’s arrest on Tuesday, 12th August (local time) saying there was a risk she might destroy evidence. The charges against Keon Hee include violations of capital market and financial investment laws, as well as political funds laws. She denies the charges.
South Korea’s former first lady, Kim Keon Hee, was arrested after a court issued a warrant to arrest her following accusations of graft that she denies, a special prosecutor leading a wide-reaching probe said https://t.co/hzEZ98bGME pic.twitter.com/N2TjDXS1Zo
— Reuters (@Reuters) August 13, 2025
According to investigators, Kim earned over 800 million won (£428,000) between 2009 and 2012 by manipulating the share prices of Deutsch Motors, a local BMW dealership, with the help of others.
She is also accused of taking over 270 million won worth of illegal political support through free opinion polling services, allegedly used to influence candidate selections for the conservative People Power Party in the 2022 byelections.
The third charge says that she accepted luxury gifts including Chanel handbags and expensive jewellery from the Unification Church through a shaman intermediary. In return, she helped the church secure favourable treatment for development projects in Cambodia.
Keon Hee was questioned for more than seven hours last week before prosecutors sought the arrest warrant. During her four-and-a-half-hour court hearing, she denied all charges and complained that issues from before her marriage were being dragged into the case. She will be held at the Nambu detention centre in south-west Seoul, separate from her husband.
Kim, once thought to be highly influential behind the scenes during her husband’s presidency, was already no stranger to controversy.
Her term in the Blue House was clouded by scandals including the so-called “Dior bag” affair and recent revelations that both her master’s and doctoral degrees were revoked over plagiarism.
Meanwhile, her husband, former president Yoon Suk Yeol, has been in custody since July over a separate case his failed attempt to impose martial law in December last year. That move, which he reversed just six hours later under intense political pressure, threw the country into a constitutional crisis and was condemned as a direct attack on democracy.
Yoon was first detained in January while still in office on charges of leading an insurrection, becoming the first sitting South Korean president to be arrested. Although a court later released him in March on technical grounds, the Constitutional Court removed him from office in April, calling his actions “a grave betrayal of the people’s trust.”
Prosecutors now accuse Yoon of abusing power and obstructing official duties. They say he declared martial law to break the political deadlock caused by the opposition’s control of parliament and to prevent his impeachment.
He is accused of deploying troops to block lawmakers from entering the national assembly building to overturn the decree and of giving orders to “break down the doors” of parliament and “drag people out, even if it takes firing guns.” Yoon’s lawyers deny he ordered the use of firearms.
He is also accused of trying to have key opposition figures, including now-President Lee Jae Myung, arrested first, hiding secure phone records from after martial law ended, and obstructing warrants issued by the Corruption Investigation Office.
Yoon’s lawyers argue the investigation is politically motivated, rushed, and flawed. They say most suspects are already detained, all evidence is secured, and there’s no real risk of evidence being destroyed.
With Kim Keon Hee’s arrest, both she and Yoon now face criminal trials that could reshape how South Koreans view presidential power and the people who hold it.
