[정용관 칼럼]”Politics has overtaken the prosecution” What is different now?

President, who opposed curbing the president’s investigative control authority as “illegal”
After more than two years in power, there is no mention of restoring the situation to its original state.
Shim Woo-jung, invalid publication or revocation and publication
Someone who restores trust without solving this problem completely.

Jeong Yong-kwan, Editorial Director: The ceremony for the appointment of Prosecutor General Shim Woo-jung held at the Yongsan Presidential Office recently was held quietly. Not one word was released about what President Yoon Seok-yeol said at the meeting. According to the attendees, “We were very careful not to say nonsense.” Rumor has it that only very personal things were discussed. I suddenly remembered Chief Prosecutor Yoon Seok-yeol’s installation ceremony about five years ago. Then-President Moon Jae-in, who had chosen Prosecutor General Yoon despite the opposition of many of his advisers, read a ‘request’, saying, “The same opinion must be I also remember what he said, “Congratulations on your wife.”

As the two scenes overlap, we imagine how complicated President Yoon felt, once receiving the appointment letter and once in office for the provide an appointment letter. I was in a position where I had no choice but to be careful about what I said, to the point where I couldn’t even bring up the platitudes of ‘political neutrality’ and ‘rigorous scrutiny’ when that I gave the appointment letter to my favorite president … .

Although it is difficult to define in quantifiable terms, I believe that ‘suspicion and distrust of power’ is strongly rooted in the consciousness of our people. It is a preconceived notion that those in power will try to use their power to build a wall and protect each other, even if they are to blame. This is not a matter of ‘law’ but a matter of ‘feeling’. The highest authority must respect the truth of these doubts, whether they are right or wrong. This means that you are responsible for taking a much stricter approach to matters related to you or those around you, whether in terms of content or procedures. That is the realm of politics. At this point the president failed.

There is no need to go into the details of how this happened, but since Shim Woo-jung’s prosecution system has just been launched, there is something I want to point out again. It is a matter of the Attorney General’s authority to lead the investigation into the Deutsche Motors stock price manipulation case. This is because he is seen as a key link in public sentiment and disappointment with Yoon Seok-yeol’s government.

In 2020, when Justice Minister Choo Mi-ae used the authority to issue the Prosecutor General’s investigative control authority for the Lime Fund fraud case and the Deutsche case, President Yoon protested , saying, “It is illegal and violates the Prosecutor’s Office Act. At that time, the phrase “the president is not the minister’s deputy” also came out. Regardless of whether it was a violation of the Office of the Prosecutor Act, at least in the case of Deutsche, there was room for a conflict of interest because it involved the president’s wife or mother-in-law . This is why Prosecutor General Yoon had no choice but to accept the loss of investigative control authority even though he strongly opposed it at the time.

However, President Yoon did not reverse the ban on investigative control authority, which he said was “certainly illegal,” and dragged it out for more than two years. What would it look like if the Attorney General’s authority to lead the investigation into the Deutsche case and other cases was restored to its original state immediately after he took office? What would it look like if, under the guidance of the Prosecutor General, the investigation of Ms. Kim Kun-hee was accelerated and appropriate measures taken? However, it is not clear if an incident like the luxury bag would have happened, but at least he would have been able to show confidence that what he said in front of the public was no different from what he did afterwards to be the president.

Former Justice Minister Han Dong-hoon and Justice Minister Park Sung-jae, who have been trying to harm the enemy, are not exempt from the responsibility of ‘aiding and abetting’ against’. Former President Lee Won-seok spoke of being ‘a person independent of the law’ and left only a record of verbally asking Minister Park for the right to control the study in July, just before he left office. I don’t know if he was aware of the conflict between power and public opinion, or if he was in insurmountable distress, but he just seemed to be passing the burden on to the president which came after him.

Now it’s President Shim’s turn. Whether declaring a lack of executive authority to investigate is invalid or publicly calling for the restoration of executive authority, in the end, any solution is invalid unless the tangled knot is untied according to common sense. An investigative team from the Seoul Central District Prosecutors Office, which bypassed the president’s phone and trusted him with his cell phone and conducted a door-to-door search at a building linked to the Secret Service, has lost trust a long time ago. No matter what plausible legal logic they put up as a wall of protection, many people will not shake their heads, claiming that the special groups of Mr. Son and Mrs. Kim, another ‘Zhenju’ found guilty since short for supporting and supporting stock. price treatment in appellate court, different. This means that the prosecution has to follow the right path even now.

‘Power is the power of interpretation.’ In a democratic country, those who interpret the word of God have power, and in a country governed by the rule of law, those who have the authority to interpret the law have power. Since the ‘standards of interpretation’ are different for each regime, it can be nothing but a crisis for the republican government. During the scandal in which the attorney-general was stripped of his authority to lead the investigation, a senior prosecutor in charge of the Lime Fund case left the prosecution, saying, ” Politics has overtaken the charge. What is the difference between then and now? I don’t know how confident the new president is. I just hope they face the fact that the public opinion of the special prosecutor is over 60%.