A Seoul court on Monday sentenced a government official to eight months in prison for illegally accessing personal data on a former prosecutor general’s extramarital son.

Cho I-je, 54, a high-ranking official at the Seocho District Office in southern Seoul, was found guilty of accessing and leaking the boy’s information, a move that prompted Prosecutor General Chae Dong-wook to resign in September last year.

In addition, a National Intelligence Service official was given a suspended jail term for engaging in similar practices. The spy agency official, surnamed Song, received a prison term of eight months, with a probation of two years.

Chae’s illegitimate son was reportedly an elementary school student in Seocho.

The court said that Cho “had unauthorized access to the private information without following legal guidelines and caused social woes by spreading false information to the media.”

Considering the law on personal information aimed at the protection of private life, stern punishment was needed, said the court.

Its verdict also clarified that the NIS official went beyond his authority in accessing the data.

Meanwhile, presidential aide Cho Oh-young, 55, who had also been indicted, was acquitted of allegations related to the illegal acquisition of information on Chae’s son.

The prosecution said earlier this year that it had found that Chae fathered an illegitimate son, confirming an allegation that led to his resignation in September 2013. In its unveiling of the eight-month-long investigation into the allegation, the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office had said that the allegation of a love child was true or close to the truth.

Investigators said the prosecution could not come up with an absolute conclusion of 100 percent certainty without conducting a DNA test. The agency, however, reportedly could make judgments based on other evidence.

Prosecutors had said that Chae was marked as the child’s father on various government documents, medical records and other related documents since the child’s birth, adding that Chae was also recorded as the husband of the child’s 54-year-old mother, only identified by her surname Lim.

By Kim Yon-se (kys@heraldcorp.com)