Anchor: President Yoon Suk Yeol has granted a special pardon to former South Gyeongsang Governor Kim Kyoung-soo, reinstating Kim's right to run in elections, despite objections from his own ruling People Power Party. Yoon also commuted prison terms for businesspeople and lifted administrative penalties on working-class citizens. 
Kim Bum-soo has more. 

Report: Marking Liberation Day, which falls on Thursday, President Yoon Suk Yeol has exercised his executive clemency, granting pardons and restoring political rights for a total of one-thousand-219 people.

Among the beneficiaries is former South Gyeongsang Governor Kim Kyoung-soo who was pardoned without reinstatement in 2022 while serving a two-year sentence for online opinion rigging to help former President Moon Jae-in get elected in 2017.

Yoon on Tuesday approved the list which was finalized at a Cabinet meeting earlier in the day, after a justice ministry panel provided its recommendations last week.  

The decision came amid political wrangling within the ruling party over restoring Kim's right to run for public office.
 
Also on the list of 55 politicians receiving the presidential clemency is former senior presidential secretary for political affairs Cho Yoon-sun. 

She completed her 14-month prison term for her involvement in the creation of a blacklist of artists critical of the Park Geun-hye administration, but her rights had not been reinstated.  

Announcing the special amnesty, the government said the move is aimed at promoting social unity by pardoning those who devoted themselves to serving the nation. 

Along with politicians, a total of 15 businesspeople have either been pardoned or their sentences commuted.

A total of 410-thousand other offenders are getting their administrative penalties, such as driver's license revocations, lifted. 

This latest round of pardons, the fifth granted by the Yoon administration, will take effect at 12:00 a.m. Thursday. 
Kim Bum-soo, KBS World Radio News.