hankyoreh

Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-youl leaves the Institute of Justice in Jincheon, North Chungcheong Province. (Kim Bong-gyu, staff photographer)

For once, the ruling and opposition parties were on the same page about prosecutorial reform. The six members on a subcommittee of the National Assembly’s Special Committee for Reform of the Judiciary had agreed to abolish the central investigative department at the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office (SPO) and to establish a new special investigative office.

Catching wind of the situation, the central investigative department stealthily set up a “situation management” team. Just five days after the subcommittee announced that an agreement had been reached, the department launched an investigation. The press shifted its attention in that direction, and public opinion was distracted by a corruption scandal at a savings bank.

In the end, the politicians on the subcommittee came under attack for effectively “cashiering the marines in the middle of their amphibious assault.” Victims of the savings bank scandal even gathered in front of the SPO to protest the closure of the central investigative department.

Thus, the National Assembly’s attempt to reform South Korea’s mighty prosecution service was frustrated, and the plan to abolish the central investigative department fizzled out. All that happened in three months, between March and May of 2011.

In November 2012, then Prosecutor General Han Sang-dae came under pressure to step down after multiple prosecutors were implicated in sex scandals and bribery. But when the prosecutor general once again toyed with a reform plan that included shutting down the central investigative department, prosecutors in the department joined the forces calling for Han’s resignation, defying the respect typically paid to senior colleagues. In the end, Han was pushed out, and the abolition of the central investigative department was called off.

There had been strong public support for abolishing the department since the death of former President Roh Moo-hyun in 2009, but the prosecutors had survived that crisis through tactics such as these.

Another opportunity for prosecutorial reform had been squandered during the preceding Roh administration when the central investigative department’s drive to pull no punches in its investigations — even digging up dirt on the sitting president’s campaign financing — received enthusiastic public support.

The administration of current President Moon Jae-in has kept prosecutorial reform firmly in its grip from the very beginning so as to avoid a repeat of the Roh administration’s failure. The Blue House has coordinated the reform plan directly, on the grounds that the prosecutors shouldn’t be put in charge of their own reform. Blue House staff have pushed through a redistribution of investigative powers between the prosecutors and police and even adjusted the bill for the Corruption Investigation Office for High-Ranking Officials (CIO).

But in this pursuit of reforms that have proved more difficult than a revolution, nobody seems to have recognized the actual target of reform. While Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-youl, the second appointed under Moon, supposedly promised to participate in reform, the intensity of his loyalty to the “company” was overlooked.

While serving as head of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office, Yoon diligently investigated the wrongdoing of Korea’s ousted conservatives. But since becoming prosecutor general, he has shifted his focus on the powers that be.

After a year or so, Yoon explicitly instructed his subordinates that investigating the “powers that be,” typically meaning the party in power, is the essence of reform. He was arguing that redistributing investigative power and launching the CIO were not enough to achieve prosecutorial reform. Since his investigations into the ruling Democratic Party attracted a vigorous base of support and made him the leading conservative candidate for president, Yoon now has no need to conceal his true feelings.

The prosecutors’ investigations into the Democratic Party over the past year and five months have focused not so much on political corruption as on the political establishment itself. They have waded into the National Assembly’s confirmation hearings and taken aim at policy measures as well. They focused the public spotlight on forgery in a university application of former Justice Minister Cho Kuk’s daughter and on Justice Minister bypassing standard procedure for requesting medical leave for her son in the military, blowing both incidents out of proportion.

The stubborn assumption that investigating the party in power is equivalent to reform inevitably leads to unbalanced and half-cocked investigations. The approach leaves out everyone on the other side of politics. The head of the opposition party abused his power during his time as government minister by ordering that charges be left off a warrant, and the floor leader of the opposition party was accused of various kinds of corruption involving his children’s admission to university. But they all got off scot-free, and none of them were subjected to “fishing expeditions” by prosecutors determined to dig up some illegality.

Needless to say, the same goes for the prosecutors themselves and their family members. The controversy on Channel A and a recent incident in which lobbyists entertained prosecutors at a hostess bar show that the prosecutors themselves are excluded from the mandate to investigate the “powers that be.”

The formula that investigating the party in power is reform never made sense to begin with. As previous experience has shown, such investigations are fundamentally impossible without the consent of the current administration. On the other hand, simply giving the prosecutors free rein to carry out investigations doesn’t lead to prosecutorial reform, as we saw in the Roh administration. In the end, the phrase is a false conception of reform, purely designed to dodge reform that would shrink the prosecution service’s authority.

The first of the tricks used in the Chinese classic “The Thirty-Six Stratagem” is “man tian guo hai,” or “deceive the heavens to cross the sea.” The first secret to winning a battle, in other words, is deceiving the enemy.

Yoon’s emphasis on investigating the party in power instantly elevated the prosecutors, themselves the ostensible subjects of reform, into the ranks of “apostles of justice” resisting the political establishment.

A considerable number of undecideds, people uninterested in either political party, have sided with Yoon. During that process, Yoon’s investigations of the party in power have come to be seen as reform and the prosecutorial reform advocated by the party in power has come to be seen as an attempt to obstruct its investigations. That’s a marvelous example of “deceiving the heavens to cross the sea.”

Those who have fallen for Yoon’s campaign to investigate the party in power are unable to recognize its limitations. A considerable number of know-it-all commentators and progressive pundits have aligned themselves with Yoon. They were fooled during the Roh administration, and now they’re being fooled again.

But this won’t end with deception. When the opposition frontrunner for the next presidential election is orchestrating investigations against the party in power, he’s engaging in political activity. That makes it all the more dangerous.

The CIO will be launched soon, after the prosecutorial disciplinary board reviews allegations against Yoon on Dec. 10. The prosecutor general’s investigative drive against the party in power is running out of steam.

According to an old Chinese proverb, heaven’s net is large and wide, but it lets nothing through. Does Yoon really think he can slip through that net?

By Kim Yi-taek, editorial writer

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