Legal and Academic Groups: "Special Counsel on Fabricated Indictments Threatens Foundations of Rule of Law"

Heonbyeon, Hanbyeon, Jeonggyomo and Chakhanbeop issue joint statement
"No one can be a judge in their own case"

Kim Eui-gyeom, secretary of the Democratic Party of Korea on the National Assembly’s Legislation and Judiciary Committee, enters the meeting room on the 4th, passing People Power Party lawmakers holding a protest outside the committee room against the Democratic Party-led special counsel bill on fabricated indictments. Photo by Yonhap News Agency.

Legal and professors' groups criticized the special counsel bill on fabricated indictments being pursued by the Democratic Party of Korea, calling it "an anti-constitutional act that threatens the foundations of the Constitution, democracy and the rule of law."

The Lawyers' Association for Constitutional Thought (Heonbyeon), the Lawyers' Association for Human Rights and Unification of the Korean Peninsula (Hanbyeon), the National Professors' Association for Social Justice (Jeonggyomo), and People Who Make Good Laws (Chakhanbeop) issued a joint statement on Nov. 5. They said, "Creating a special counsel to reinvestigate criminal cases involving the president under the lead of the ruling party, and having the president appoint that special counsel, is itself an obvious conflict of interest." They added that it "also runs counter to the fundamental principle of the rule of law that no one can be a judge in their own case."

On Nov. 4, the Democratic Party passed the special counsel bill on fabricated indictments at the National Assembly's Legislation and Judiciary Committee. The bill centers on investigating whether the cases in which President Lee Jae-myung was indicted were fabricated.

The original bill, introduced in April, covered 12 cases. These included allegations involving the development of Daejang-dong, Baekhyeon-dong and Wirye New Town, in which President Lee was indicted; the Ssangbangwool North Korea remittance case; the violation of the Public Official Election Act case; the Seongnam FC political donations allegations; the perjury instigation case; the corporate card misuse case; the Moon Jae-in administration's statistical manipulation case; and the West Sea civil servant shooting case. The revised bill passed by the Legislation and Judiciary Committee added four cases from the Moon administration—the preferential employment of former President Moon's son-in-law, the alleged manipulation of the economic feasibility assessment for Wolsong Nuclear Power Plant Unit 1, the leak of classified information about THAAD, and the repatriation of North Korean defectors by sea to North Korea—as well as the Ssangbangwool Group stock manipulation case.

The groups noted that in the North Korean defectors' repatriation case, the defendants were found guilty in a recent second-instance trial, and senior national security officials from the Moon administration were given suspended prison sentences. The first-instance trials are still underway in the other three cases.

They also criticized the bill for violating the principle of separating investigations from indictments. "The government and the Democratic Party, which dismantled the prosecution and even abolished its authority to conduct supplementary investigations under the pretext of prosecutorial reform, now intend to assign both investigative and prosecutorial powers to a special counsel investigating the president and themselves," they said. "This amounts to creating a private special counsel and runs counter to the constitutional principles of equality and fairness."

The groups also challenged the grounds for appointing a special counsel. The Democratic Party has maintained that a previous parliamentary investigation revealed evidence of fabricated indictments. The groups countered that "no evidence of fabrication has been uncovered at all." They also cited the fact that Lee Hwa-young, former vice governor of Gyeonggi Province for Peace, who raised allegations that he was pressured with a drinking party in the North Korea remittance case, was sentenced to four months in prison in the first-instance trial for perjury. The groups also criticized the Justice Ministry for forming a committee to reinvestigate President Lee's cases and President Lee for seeking to nominate people who have advocated dropping the charges as justice minister.

The groups said, "The special counsel bill on fabricated indictments will face broad public resistance" and "will be followed by a stern judgment from history and the judiciary."

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