# A Five-Term Seoul Mayor's Career Now Rests on an Appeal > A 10 million won fine, ten times the sum that would strip him of office, has left Oh Se-hoon fighting to hold the mayoralty he only just won again, and with it any hope of a run at the presidency. - Source: Korea First - Canonical URL: https://koreafirst.tv/article/a-five-term-seoul-mayor-s-career-now-rests-on-an-appeal - Author: Korea First Staff - Section: Politics - Published: 2026-07-23T10:57:00.356Z - Updated: 2026-07-23T11:45:48.691Z - Tags: Oh Se-hoon, Seoul mayor, Political Funds Act, People Power Party, 2027 election, Myung Tae-kyun --- Oh Se-hoon made history in June by winning a fifth term as mayor of Seoul, a feat no one before him had managed. Weeks later, a courtroom has put that record and his broader ambitions in jeopardy. A fine handed down on Thursday now threatens to end his tenure and, with it, the presidential run many in his camp had imagined. The penalty itself sounds modest. The court fined him 10 million won, roughly 6,820 dollars, for a violation of the Political Funds Act. The danger lies in a rule that turns a small sum into a career-ending one. Any confirmed fine of 1 million won or more forces an elected official from office, and Oh's penalty landed at ten times that line. ## The case against him The charge reaches back to the 2021 by-election that first returned Oh to city hall after more than a decade away. Prosecutors said he received polling results from Myung Tae-kyun, a political broker, and that a businessman named Kim Han-jung covered the costs. The court concluded that 5 of 10 polls, together worth 21 million won, had been paid for illegally, treating that arrangement as an unlawful contribution. Oh rejects the verdict outright. All of the counts, he argued, should have ended in acquittal, insisting there was no real evidence beyond the testimony of Myung, whom he branded a notorious liar, and a scattering of circumstantial detail. He has vowed to appeal, and until the higher courts rule he keeps his post. ## A long road through the courts Korea sets tight deadlines for cases like this. The appellate court has until October 22 to rule, and the Supreme Court until January 22 of next year, a schedule that gives Oh two more chances to bring the fine below the disqualifying threshold. Fines of this kind are sometimes reduced on appeal and sometimes upheld, so the outcome is far from settled. The stakes could hardly be higher for him. Park Chang-hwan, a professor at Jangan University, called the situation an enormous political crisis, warning that recovery would be virtually impossible if the conviction stands. For a politician who had positioned himself as a contender for the conservative movement's presidential nomination, an upheld verdict would close that path. ## A city hall boxed in Even as he fights the ruling, Oh governs from a weakened position. The Seoul Metropolitan Council is dominated by the rival Democratic Party of Korea, which holds 80 of its 118 seats against 38 for his People Power Party. That opposition majority has already pressed him to make what it calls a bold decision, a barely coded call for him to step down rather than drag out the fight. The episode ripples well beyond Seoul. With the 2027 presidential contest already taking shape, the People Power Party had counted Oh among its plausible standard-bearers, and his legal peril injects fresh uncertainty into a field still searching for a front-runner. For now his future, and a piece of his party's, hangs on how the appeals courts read a set of eight-year-old opinion polls. --- Originally published by Korea First. Free to cite with attribution and a link to https://koreafirst.tv/article/a-five-term-seoul-mayor-s-career-now-rests-on-an-appeal.