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Former chief justice of South Korea’s Supreme Court Yang Sung-tae answers questions regarding judicial misconduct and political favoritism during his term on June 1 in Seongnam

“Maintain friendly relations with the stance of heeding the BH’s [Blue House’s] position as much as possible” (“Analysis of the Impact of the Sung Wan-jong List and Review of Possible Responses,” a document from Apr. 12, 2015)

“Unofficial contact with the BH [. . .] an additional strategic stance would also be possible” (“Ways to Persuade the BH [Blue House] to Push High Court Legislation,” a document from July 28, 2015)

The word “stance” appears with unusual frequency in documents composed by the National Court Administration while Yang Sung-tae was serving as chief justice of South Korea’s Supreme Court. It is mentioned every time plans were made to persuade the Blue House and the political establishment about a proposal to create high courts to reduce the Supreme Court’s workload.

The courts are supposed to cherish Article 103 of the Constitution, which states that “judges should be independent to make their decisions according to their conscience and in keeping with the laws and the Constitution,” but this provokes suspicions that they were weighing their “stance” on major issues according to the potential pros and cons for the judiciary.

As the word itself suggests, Yang Sung-tae’s “stance” shifted with the situation and sometimes caused confusion. One of the best-known examples was the case of the Unified Progressive Party (UPP). Documents largely drafted in 2014 and 2015 contain extensive passages showing that the UPP lawsuit was used in the Supreme Court’s rivalry with the Constitutional Court over which would be the highest court in the land.

A document composed by the judicial policy office on Jan. 17, 2015, shows that the National Court Administration considered making a ruling that would rebut the Constitutional Court’s decision, describing this as an “opportunity to shake up the general perspective of the Constitutional Court’s status” and stating that “this could be used to pressure [the Constitutional Court] and prevent it from annulling judgments.”

The National Court Administration under Yang had originally explored the strategy of even booting UPP members from their seats on local assemblies. In a June 2015 document called “Administrative Lawsuits against UPP Lawmakers in Local District (Related to the BH),” the National Court Administration considered the option of arranging for local government heads to file lawsuits “to preclude the UPP from being reestablished as a new party.”

The Supreme Court’s internal team of investigators came to the following conclusion about this document: “Given the continuing conflict over status between the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court, this can be seen as paving the way for maintaining amiable relations with the Blue House by offering a way to check the UPP’s aspirations to establish a new party, a matter that was of interest to the Blue House, while also seeking to improve the status of the judiciary.”

But just five months later, when the Jeonju District Court made a ruling preserving the status of local lawmakers with the UPP, the National Court Administration sent a press guide to the Jeonju court’s public relations officer, describing the ruling as “appropriate in pointing out that the Constitutional Court had overstepped its authority.” The Supreme Court’s “stance” had changed once again because of its jockeying for position as the highest court.

Even though this document caused an uproar at the time when sections of it were leaked to the press and though it was classified as extremely important during the Supreme Court’s internal investigation, it was never made public.

This practice of prioritizing political considerations over legal principles in assessing the relative merits of judicial rulings extended to decisions made by the Supreme Court. During a review on June 8, 2016, of whether a lawsuit by UPP lawmakers in the National Assembly asking the court to confirm their status as lawmakers should be heard by the Supreme Court’s full bench, the possibility of “letting it be known that the judiciary has the authority of deciding whether lawmakers have lost their seats in the National Assembly” was once again mentioned as a “positive reason” to have the case tried by the full bench.

Terms more apt to be used by the military or intelligence services – including “strategies for forging alliances,” “signaling,” “major deal,” “pressure points” and “forces in the center and periphery” – frequently appear in documents related to the scandal in the judiciary. These terms were typically used in documents dealing with clandestine matters, such as courtroom deals and keeping tabs on judges and lawyers who were critical of the chief justice and figuring out their plans.

A document reviewing ways to pressure the Korean Bar Association for opposing the appellate court proposal as “an unconstitutional idea” used the phrase “wage war on close neighbors and make peace with distant ones.” This phrase, which dates back to China’s Warring States Period, referred to a strategy of backing local lawyer’s associations while isolating the national Korean Bar Association.

By Hyun So-eun, staff reporter

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