Rep. Lee Jae-myung, chairman of the main Democratic Party of Korea, pays his condolences at a memorial alter Uiseong County, NorthGyeongsang Province, Thursday, for a firefighter who lost his live while containing a wildfire in the county the previous day. Yonhap

Prosecutors on Thursday appealed a recent acquittal of Rep. Lee Jae-myung, head of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea, to the Supreme Court, following the overturning of a suspended prison sentence by a high court this week.

On Wednesday, the Seoul High Court acquitted Lee of lying as a presidential candidate during the 2022 election, removing a major legal hurdle for the politician who is widely considered a potential liberal presidential front-runner.

The suspended prison term, if finalized, would have stripped him of his parliamentary seat and barred him from running in the next presidential election.

The former governor of Gyeonggi Province is widely expected to run in the presidential election in the event the Constitutional Court upholds the impeachment of suspended President Yoon Suk Yeol, which would trigger a snap presidential election within 60 days.

During the initial trial, the opposition leader was found guilty of lying during a media interview in December 2021 that he did not play golf with the late Kim Moon-ki, a former executive of Seongnam Development Corp., which was behind a controversial development project in Seongnam, south of Seoul, when Lee was the city's mayor. (Yonhap)