Prosecutor General says DP's law would make him useless

Prosecutor General Kim Oh-soo presided over a meeting of regional chief prosecutors at the Supreme Prosecutors' Office in Seocho District, southern Seoul on Monday morning. [YONHAP]

The chief of the state prosecution service officially declared Monday his opposition to the liberal Democratic Party's (DP) plan to strip the agency of its investigative powers, saying such a move would render his position meaningless.

“If the prosecution’s investigative functions are abolished, there is no longer any meaning for me as the prosecutor general to carry out my duties,” Prosecutor General Kim Oh-soo said at a meeting of chief regional prosecutors at the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office in Seocho District on Monday morning.

With less than a month before the inauguration of President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol, a former prosecutor general, the DP recently hastened its attempts to complete prosecutorial reforms, refocusing on a bill to completely strip the prosecution of its investigative powers — the same bill that Yoon protested when he announced his resignation as prosecutor general in March 2021.

Kim said the DP’s law would make Korea an outlier among developed countries.

“A systemic prohibition on prosecutorial investigations is without precedent in advanced legal systems,” the prosecutor general said.

Kim said he was not concerned about his personal position, but warned that if prosecutors no longer have the authority to conduct investigations, “criminals will not be punished and victims' suffering will increase.

“The handling of serious crimes, such as corruption and wrongdoing committed in business and elections will face greater delays as the prosecution system will be diluted to the extent it can no longer be called a prosecutorial service under the constitution,” Kim said.

Since President Moon Jae-in took office in May 2017, his administration and ruling DP have pushed forward a series of so-called reform to weaken the power of state-run agencies, particularly the prosecution service. The DP at the end of 2020 rammed through a bill to establish the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO) and give more power to the National Police Agency, limiting the scope of investigations that can be conducted by the prosecution.

While Yoon has not called for complete abolition of the CIO like some PPP members had, he did call for an abolition of Article 24 of the CIO law, which grants the CIO authority to demand the prosecution and police hand over cases, as one of his campaign pledges.

PPP lawmakers on the National Assembly’s Legislation and Judiciary Committee on Monday denounced the DP’s plan to push for a complete abolition of the prosecution’s powers before the presidential handover, calling it a self-serving maneuver.

“The DP is threatening to pass a bill stripping the prosecution of its investigative powers during the April parliamentary session so that the incoming president cannot exercise his veto,” the lawmakers said in a statement. “This is tantamount to refusing to accept the election outcome, as well as a declaration of war against the popular will.”

The PPP lawmakers also suggested that the law was intended to prevent investigations by the prosecution into members of the Democratic Party, including into a controversy surrounding official expenses filed by the DP’s presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung and his wife Kim Hye-kyung.

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]