Former U.S. diplomat Morse Tan stood in Seoul Central District Court on Friday and pleaded not guilty to defamation charges tied to comments about South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, including remarks he made on American soil.
Fox News Digital reported that Tan faces prosecution under South Korean criminal defamation rules for statements about Lee, and that authorities have barred him from leaving the country since a visit that began in May.
The case puts free speech, criminal defamation law, and alliance politics on a collision course. Tan, who served as Ambassador-at-Large for the Office of Global Criminal Justice in President Trump’s first term, says Seoul is punishing protected political speech. South Korean officials say the matter is proceeding under local law and due process.
Tan appeared Friday at Seoul Central District Court. He told Fox News Digital he entered a not guilty plea and framed the fight in blunt terms.
Outside court, Tan pressed his core claim: the prosecution targets speech he views as lawful political criticism, including comments delivered in Washington.
"This is political lawfare. This is a persecution, not a prosecution."
He also tied his plea to his view of the underlying dispute over Lee.
"pleaded not guilty because I believe that Lee Jae Myung is guilty"
Fox News Digital identified Tan as a former constitutional law teacher and former dean of Liberty University’s law school. He has cast himself as an outspoken critic of what he calls Lee’s approach toward the North Korean regime.
South Korean authorities charged Tan under the Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection, etc., and under the Criminal Act. If found guilty, he could face a prison term. The record does not state a maximum sentence length.
The case rests on more than one set of remarks. One track reaches back to a June 2025 talk at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The event was titled “Report on Election Fraud in the June 3 South Korean Presidential election.” During that appearance, Tan responded to a question by citing allegations about Lee’s teenage years.
Those allegations, as Tan presented them, claimed Lee was involved in a gang rape and murder as a teenager, was sent to juvenile detention, and did not complete junior high and high school. Tan later said the speech at issue was “protected speech is about as protected as it gets.” He also said South Korea’s prosecutor invoked “criminal defamation, a dubious category which does not exist in the U.S.,” to bring the case.
A second charge involves a July 2025 talk inside South Korea. Tan said he “raised some issues as questions” about the president at that event.
South Korean prosecutors say the criminal allegations about Lee are unsubstantiated. Reporting relayed through Fox News Digital from Korean outlets captured the official line in direct terms.
KBS World reported the prosecution’s position that officials previously verified there was no record of Lee’s being incarcerated at a juvenile detention center and concluded the incarceration rumors were false. Korea JoongAng Daily reported prosecutors’ position that Lee had not “been prevented from attending middle or high school due to such a criminal record.” Lee is now 62.
That clash sits at the center of the defamation theory. Tan’s side says the statements were not knowingly false and were not made with intent to defame. Prosecutors say the claims do not hold up against official checks.
Tan has not been allowed to leave South Korea since arriving in May, a restriction he links directly to the case. He said the ban kept him from attending his grandmother’s funeral.
A spokesperson for the South Korean Embassy in Washington defended both the prosecution posture and the travel limit.
"This case is being handled in accordance with the relevant laws and regulations, established principles and due process in the Republic of Korea and the restriction on departure is also imposed and reviewed accordingly."
Tan calls the restriction part of a broader pressure campaign. He told Fox News Digital that people view him as leading resistance to what he described as the communizing of South Korea, and that the government treats him as a threat because of his criticism of Lee’s alleged appeasement policy toward North Korea.
"People consider me to be leading a movement against the communizing of South Korea."
The procedural path was not a straight line. In April 2026, Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency Cyber dismissed a complaint about Tan’s alleged defamatory statements and declared it had “no right to prosecute,” according to material carried via National Review Online in the Fox News Digital account.
That was not the end. KBS World reported that police, who had initially decided not to hand over Tan’s case to the prosecution, launched a reinvestigation at the prosecution’s request. The case then moved forward to the Friday hearing in Seoul Central District Court.
Tan’s attorney, in comments carried by Asia Business Daily and relayed in the Fox News Digital report, challenged both jurisdiction and intent.
The attorney said, “Even if jurisdiction is recognized, the statements did not present false information, and Tan was not aware that they were false,” and added, “He had no intention to defame.”
The U.S. State Department did not address the charging theory in detail. A department spokesperson said, “The Trump Administration has no higher priority than the safety and security of Americans,” and added, “Due to privacy and other considerations, we have nothing further to share at this time.”
U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Michelle Steel, a former Republican congresswoman from California, has not publicly commented on Tan’s legal case, Tan said. Investigators and diplomats have not released a fuller public account of any private contacts on his behalf.
At issue is whether South Korean criminal defamation law can reach remarks made at a Washington press venue, and how far it can go against later comments on Korean soil. Tan argues the National Press Club speech sits inside core political speech protections. Seoul’s embassy says Korean statutes, principles, and due process govern the filing and the departure restriction.
Criminal defamation, as Tan notes, is not a U.S. federal speech category in the same form. South Korea’s charging instruments named in the case are domestic statutes that treat certain false statements as criminal matters. The court must still decide guilt. No conviction has been entered.
Authorities have not publicly released the full charging text, a case number, or a detailed evidentiary index in the material provided. They have also not publicly released a final ruling on jurisdiction in the Friday appearance beyond the fact of the hearing and the not guilty plea.
Investigators and the court will need to determine whether the June 2025 Washington remarks and the July 2025 South Korea remarks meet the elements of the cited statutes, including falsity and intent standards under Korean law. They will need to determine how the April 2026 police dismissal interacts with the later prosecution-directed reinvestigation. They will need to determine whether the departure restriction remains justified as the case proceeds.
Officials have not said whether additional counts are under review. No public results have been released about a next hearing date in the package used for this report. Tan’s team frames the file as jurisdiction overreach and political retaliation. Prosecutors frame it as a standard false-statement case about the president.
The dispute over Lee’s teenage history remains sharply contested in the public record presented here. Tan repeated serious allegations as part of a political critique. Prosecutors say records checks found no juvenile detention history and reject the school-interruption claim. The court process, not cable-argument volume, will decide the defamation counts.
Tan’s record includes senior U.S. government service on global criminal justice. That background raises the diplomatic temperature when a former American envoy is confined to South Korea under a speech-related criminal file. The State Department’s limited public comment leaves the safety line intact while withholding case specifics.
South Korean authorities, for their part, insist the machinery is ordinary criminal process. The embassy’s statement stressed relevant laws, established principles, and due process, and said the travel bar is imposed and reviewed under those rules.
For conservative readers watching speech cases abroad, the pattern is familiar: criminal defamation tools aimed at political critics, a reversed early police screen, and a defendant locked inside the country while the file advances. Tan calls it persecution. Seoul calls it lawful prosecution. The courtroom now has to sort those claims under the statutes named in the charge.
When a treaty ally uses criminal defamation law against a former U.S. diplomat for political speech, including speech on American soil, the test is simple: equal justice under written rules, or power policing dissent. Free nations should not need a courtroom to tell the difference.
