All due to prosecution’s procrastination

Prosecutor General Lee Won-Seok ordered junior prosecutors to launch an investigation team to look into the first lady’s suspicious acceptance of a luxury handbag from a pastor four months after President Yoon Suk Yeol took office in May 2022. As the controversy erupted last November, the prosecution cannot avoid criticism for dillydallying in its investigation for nearly five months.

It was in September 2022 that a YouTube channel disclosed the moment of the first lady receiving a Dior handbag worth 3 million won ($2,200) from the mysterious pastor. Nevertheless, the government and the People Power Party (PPP) only highlighted the “malicious recording” of the moment by anti-Yoon forces to push the first lady into a predicament. But the general public was perplexed by the image of the first lady receiving an expensive bag from an outsider and wondered how the prosecution would deal with the case. But the prosecution made no progress.

Justice Minister Park Sung-jae, a former prosecutor, pledged to investigate the case according to the law. But after the majority Democratic Party (DP) passed a motion to appoint a special prosecutor to solve the mystery, President Yoon vetoed it.

President Yoon only fueled suspicions in his special interview with KBS in February by simply expressing his “regret.” In the meantime, broadcasters which reported related suspicions received heavy censure from the Korea Communications Standards Commission. Such a response from the government certainly triggered public resentment and contributed to the PPP’s landslide defeat in the April 10 parliamentary elections.

After the DP threatened to submit the special act on the first lady in the new National Assembly which will open on May 30, the prosecution is hurriedly pushing the investigation. The same procrastination applies to the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO)’s investigation of the suspicious death of a Marine on a rescue mission last year. Even when the extraordinary law enforcement agency suffered from its leadership vacuum, the president belatedly nominated a former judge as its new head in April. But the DP passed a special act on the suspicious death of the Marine last week. It was the DP that launched the CIO to effectively deal with high-profile cases, but the DP resorting to an independent counsel is self-contradictory.

The prosecution must find the truth behind the first lady’s case before it’s too late. If the prosecution and the CIO can come up with trustworthy results of their investigation, the general public may oppose the special acts looking into the cases of the first lady and the Marine.