When his son Jun Ho, the leading midfielder of South Korea's World Cup soccer team, signed with a Chinese club, he showed China's ambition to dominate the world's most popular sports.
However, he became a different kind of symbol after two years later, when Chinese police officers detained him and denounced him for bribery and match amendments. It is the ruthless efficiency of China's legal system.
The son had insisted to the interrogator that he was innocent. He asked a lawyer, but the police said through a Korean translator that he was not needed. Police threatened to bring his wife and asked how his child would be freighted if both parents were detained.
A few months in detention, he was offered a contract with signing guilt and a promise of mild punishment in return. He took it.
He later regretted it. “The fear overtook me, and without fully understanding the accusations I confessed in hoping to return to my family,” his son told reporters at a press conference in South Korea, fighting back tears. “That was a simple mistake.”
The arrangement offered by his son, known as a petition in China, is a legal tactic that scholars further erode the rights of defendants in a long-standing judicial system.
Chinese courts and police responded to the Communist Party, with conviction rates exceeding 99%. Still, the party has tried to create a more equitable judicial system in recent years, including introducing a “pleading” system.
The system has changed how justice is done in China by allowing authorities to handle cases more quickly. But it also says it doesn't alleviate the system's equity by giving more power to prosecutors who will be punished and how long they will decide.
Just as China's top leader Xi Jinping has oppressed society-wide corruption over the past few years, judicial tactics have become an important tool used by prosecutors. It has been used in research into officials, the military, the financial industry, and in sports, as in his son's case, and in campaigns to defeat organized crime and so-called evil forces.
“They're dying and dying,” said Pu Jikian, a former human rights lawyer in Beijing who was dabbled in 2016 for “provoking trouble” to criticize Chinese officials. “Inquiries, lack of sleep, threats used in regulating processes.”
Black Box
His son's 2023 detention was part of a broader national anti-corruption campaign in football. Many senior officials have been caught up in the country, including the former president of the Chinese Football Association, who was sentenced to life in prison for accepting bribes last year.
Authorities announced in September that a two-year investigation discovered gambling and game modifications, including 120 games and 41 football clubs. His son is one of 43 athletes and officials, and said China will be banned from lifelong sports.
Many details about the investigation have not been made public, and his innocence issue may not be resolved anytime soon. However, his son's explanation gave us a glimpse into how individuals accused of crime could pressure them to accept a plea agreement. He also gave a sense of how the prosecutor could use the guilty pleas obtained this way to construct a larger case against the other suspects, in this case his teammate, Jin Jindao.
His son told reporters that he had admitted that he had received about $28,000 in payment from Jin, considering the document he signed was in Chinese. His son said there was nothing illegal about the payments and described it as a normal financial transaction between friends.
His son was detained in the northeastern city of Shenyan, but 20 other people had been detained for almost a year, he told reporters. “Every day felt like hell because I didn't know why I was freed,” he said after he signed the document last March, he was allowed to return to Korea.
He later confessed that Mr. Jin would match the amendments and learned that the documents his son signed would be used as evidence of his receipt of bribes from Mr. Jin to throw the match in 2022.
Concerns about coercion
When China introduced the judicial system in 2018, it was hailed as a fair and great advance that allowed voluntarily acknowledged people to be given voluntarily “generous” punishments.
The aim was also to streamline the judicial system that tackles caseloads that have surged over the past decades. Even before a formal charge is filed, a lenient deal can be offered to suspected offenders. They currently account for around 90% of convictions.
But lawyers and experts say suspects are often misled by false confessions. Even the top prosecutor's office recently stated that it should look into plea transactions for signs of coercion, indicating the need for careful attention.
In a recent interview with Chinese media, the judge raised concerns that the courts simply imprint lenient transactions without studying them intimately. Law professors question whether the quotas imposed on prosecutors create incentives to rush to make deals.
While investigating the practice, Xi Wei, a law professor at Anhui Normal University in central China, found 226 cases in which the defendant pleaded guilty but authorities later found erroneous and inappropriate sentences.
Powerful Tools for Shakedown
The defense attorneys say plea bargains are also being used to rail entrepreneurs and chase their assets, particularly as China's economy continues to struggle.
In 2021, authorities detained property developer Zen Jiangbin along with employees in Mianang city in southwestern China, where housing slump was hit. Local police called them gang members and asked the public to provide evidence of the crime to prove their claim.
Local governments followed Zen and his company's assets, seized acres of land, hundreds of apartments and dozens of cars. His company had paid $83 million in deposits for the parcel of land the city had auctioned off. Authorities retrieved the land and auctioned it off again.
Before the trial of Zeng and his fellow members, 14 employees (accountants, managers, staff and security guards) confessed, which began in May 2023. However, during the trial, those confessions began to be clarified.
Some employees said they didn't understand the charges and confessed in hopes of being released, according to exam transcripts posted online. Another employee was illiterate and could not read what he signed.
However, the judge accepted the plea agreement and sentenced all 14 employees to prison.
These convictions then provided a foundation for prosecutors' cases against Zen, who was charged with leading a gang, among other charges. He denied all charges and accused the prosecutor of using false confessions as evidence against him.
“This confuses the right and the wrong thing and creates something out of nothing,” he said. “These fees aren't really based.”
Zeng's wife, Chen Siyu, shared details of her husband's ordeal with social media and reporters. She was detained for two years for “postling false information online,” and was taken into custody on alleged money laundering, and was released only in December.
Zeng has been found guilty of almost every charge and has been sentenced to 20 years in prison.
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The son, a Korean soccer player, said the Chinese Football Association decided to give the story side after giving the issue a lifetime ban in September and introducing the issue to FIFA, the governing body of football.
In January, FIFA notified the Korean Football Association that it had rejected China's request for a lifetime ban. A FIFA spokesman did not say why the organization turned down China's request, but it is rare that international organizations violate the National Association's ruling on such serious allegations.
Through his agent, his son refused to be interviewed. At a press conference, he said he believes there is an audio recording of his interrogation and that the recording will exonerate him.
When asked about his son, China's foreign ministry said the issue was closed as players “admitted guilt and accepted the punishment.”
Haemin Kwak contributed to his research.
