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Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong arrives for questioning at the offices of the Special Prosecutor’s investigative team led by Park Young-soo

The investigative team led by Special Prosecutor Park Young-soo plans to request another arrest warrant for Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong after summoning him for questioning on Feb. 13. After a court dismissed its last request on Jan. 16 on the grounds that the team had insufficiently demonstrated illegal requests and quid pro quo, the team decided on an additional investigation to request another warrant this week on charges including bribery. It is reportedly attempting to add further proof of reciprocity with evidence that Samsung sent equestrian training support for Jung Yu-ra (daughter of Choi Sun-sil) to Core Sports - a company under Choi’s practical ownership - between Aug. and Oct. 2015 after a one-on-one meeting between President Park Geun-hye and Lee that July, and that the Blue House exerted pressure on the Fair Trade Commission after it began a new circular shareholding investigation following the Cheil Industries and Samsung C&T merger.

The previous warrant rejection faced heavy criticism for allegedly overlooking not only the “returns” Lee received in terms of smoothing over his taking over of management rights at Samsung Group, but also his numerous inconsistencies and outright falsehoods, along with serious concerns about the use of the company’s organization to conceal or destroy evidence. It is both appropriate and sensible that the team would conduct an additional investigation and make a new warrant request.

This also means that corresponding charges of bribe acceptance by Park are taking clearer shape. There certainly has been an abundance of evidence and testimony: former Vice Culture Minister Kim Jong’s accounts of Jung being singled out for support, “quotes” from before her meetings with chaebol chairmen, an additionally acquired 39 work notebooks belonging to former Senior Secretary to the President for Policy Coordination Ahn Jong-beom, and an FTC “pressure diary.” Once the infringements of Constitutional principles like the rule of law, market economy order, and freedom of the process are factored in besides the criminal abuse of power with official document leaking and blacklisting, the crimes become too numerous to count.

As the evidence has become clearer, Park’s attorneys have dug in their heels harder. It doggedly refused to accept a court-order search and seizure warrant - which cannot be refused except in cases of “serious infringements of national interest.” It has refused to comply with the Special Prosecutor’s investigation and attempted to drag out the impeachment trial.

This is the behavior of someone who has cast aside all human decency, let alone a sense of responsibility as a leader or ethics as a public official. The public has poured into the freezing streets every weekend for months now, yet all Park does is feed the chaos and conflict while searching for ways to extricate herself personally. The opinions her team submits to the Constitutional Court, pinning all the responsibility on her associates and advisers as one after another is arrested, make one wonder if she even has a human heart inside her. She blamed former Secretary Jeong Ho-seong for the document links on the grounds that she herself did not order them, and the Kim Ki-choon/Cho Yoon-sun line for the cultural blacklist, which she claimed to know nothing about. These are the brazen actions of someone who puts her own political desires first, inciting extremists to hold on to her seat while wasting precious time that could be spent fixing our economic and security crisis.

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