Lee Stresses Need for Supplementary Investigation Powers, Urges End to Fruitless Debate

President Lee Jae-myung has been making a series of deliberate remarks targeting intra-party discord over prosecution reform. On the 16th, President Lee posted on X (formerly Twitter): "There is no need to give entrenched forces that should be dismantled an excuse for counterattack and an opportunity to regroup because of excessive competition for political purity divorced from the essence of the matter and unnecessary measures." This marks the first time President Lee has directly addressed prosecution reform on X. At a dinner with ruling party freshman lawmakers the previous day, he reportedly remarked to the effect of "How can we change it when the title of Prosecutor General is written in the Constitution?" Regarding the direction of prosecution reform, President Lee is said to have called for "refined and meticulous reform," noting that "pushing forward blatantly will not work."

President Lee's remarks on prosecution reform appear aimed at concluding the fruitless debate over supplementary investigation powers within the ruling party while lending support to the government's bills on the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency and the Prosecution Service, which are awaiting passage in the National Assembly plenary session. Yoon Chang-ryul, Minister of the Office for Government Policy Coordination and head of the Prosecution Reform Task Force, said at a forum that day: "President Lee emphasized that the ultimate goal of prosecution reform is protecting citizens' human rights and remedying their rights."

Now the ruling party must also focus prosecution reform on remedying citizens' rights and protecting human rights. They should not turn a deaf ear to Justice Minister Jeong Seong-ho's statement that granting supplementary investigation powers to the Prosecution Service is the minimum safeguard for proper indictment and maintaining prosecutions. They must also heed experts' observations that supplementary investigation powers are necessary to check the police, which holds the authority to initiate and conclude investigations. In practice, if supplementary investigation powers are abolished, it would be virtually impossible to conduct supplementary investigations on the 800,000 cases annually transferred from police.

Due to the fruitless debate over prosecution reform, rumors of a "prosecution withdrawal deal" in President Lee's case—raised gratuitously on pro-government YouTube channels—are spreading unchecked. The ruling party dismisses this as an absurd conspiracy theory, but bears no small responsibility for allowing the situation to deteriorate to this point. With the party pushing through recklessly—from processing the three judicial reform bills to demanding a parliamentary investigation into allegations of fabricated indictments—is it any wonder that suspicions arise along the lines of "where there's smoke, there's fire"? Prosecution reform must be grounded solely in public trust, not political gains and losses.