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Copies of “Nation of Prosecutors: Raiding Democracy” by People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy’s Center for Judicial Watch, a report on Korea’s prosecution service under the past two years of President Yoon Suk-yeol’s administration sit on a desk at a press conference held on May 8, 2024. (courtesy of PSPD)

The number of search and seizure warrants requested during the past two years under the Yoon Suk-yeol administration was significantly higher than that of previous administrations, a new study has found. Further analysis reveals that the prosecutorial investigations during this period often targeted civic groups and labor unions, with investigations by prosecutors becoming a key pillar in the management of state affairs. 

The number of searches and seizures carried out against political figures has also sharply increased. Among these investigations, 95% of them targeted people affiliated with the Democratic Party. Instead of living up to promises of “compromise” and “communicating with the opposition,” critics are saying that the Yoon administration is governing via raids, causing Korea’s democracy to regress. 

The civic group People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy released a report on the prosecution service under the first two years of the Yoon administration on Wednesday. According to the report, the current government is one “of, by and for prosecutors, with a large amount of governance being regulated and reworked by prosecutors and the judiciary.”

The report contains a summary of key prosecutorial investigations, the people that have led those investigations, and a list of the country’s top prosecutors. 

According to the report, a total of 457,160 search and seizure warrants were requested last year, an increase of around 110,000 from 2021 (347,623). From May 10, 2022, to Nov. 10, 2023, 22 major prosecutorial investigations have targeted former administration figures, opposition party members, labor unions, civic groups, and media outlets. These investigations have resulted in 124 raids on anyone who appears to view things differently than the Yoon administration. 

“By selectively targeting political opponents for criminal investigations, the Yoon administration has proactively ignored the parameters of a democratic system and distorted how our political apparatus works,” the report stated. 

The ballooning authority of prosecutors under Yoon can be seen in part in the number of prosecutors dispatched to other government departments, which has also increased compared to previous administrations. As of February 2024, the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office has dispatched 50 prosecutors to 34 different government entities. Compared to March 2022 — two months before Yoon took office — this is four more prosecutors dispatched to three more state entities. 

Under the Yoon administration, prosecutors were dispatched to agencies such as the Ministry of Employment and the Labor and Ministry of Education, which rarely had prosecutors dispatched to them before the Yoon administration’s arrival. The report noted that a prosecutor had been dispatched to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, accusing the administration of “utilizing the legal power of the prosecutors to solve the dispute with the medical community [over the increase in medical school admissions], as opposed to reaching a consensus through dialogue.” 

Data on raids on the National Assembly over the last 10 years provided by the office of Democratic Party lawmaker Jung Sung-ho shows a clear uptick in compulsory investigations of those in the political world and a stark political bias in the slant of investigations. From May 2022 to May 2024, prosecutors conducted 22 search and seizure raids of lawmakers’ offices in the National Assembly. This is the same number of raids that occurred during the entire five years of the Moon administration. During the first two years of the Moon administration, only 12 raids on the National Assembly occurred. 

The tendency for prosecutors to target the political opposition has grown worse during the Yoon administration. Among the 22 search and seizure raids conducted on National Assembly members during the past two years, 21 of them targeted members of affiliates of the Democratic Party. The raids began with one conducted on the offices of the then-leader of the Democratic Party, Jeong Jin-sang, on Nov. 9, 2022, by the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office. The raid was conducted in connection with corruption allegations linked to a real-estate development project in the Daejong neighborhood in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province. This was followed by four raids on the offices of Noh Woong-rae, who was facing suspicion of bribery, and six raids related to alleged vote-buying at the party convention.  

Although there was a clear bias during the Moon administration, it’s gotten worse under Yoon. Under the Moon administration, 12 search and seizure raids targeted the opposition party while six of them targeted the Democratic Party. 

By Go Na-rin, staff reporter; Lim Jae-woo, staff reporter

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