The ruling Democratic Party of Korea unilaterally placed a bill to amend the Criminal Procedure Act, aimed at abolishing prosecutors' supplementary investigation powers, on the agenda of the National Assembly's Legislation and Judiciary Committee on Aug. 8. The party ultimately turned a blind eye to growing public anxiety over the abolition, even after allegations of police collusion and a botched investigation surfaced in the probe into the murder of a high school girl in Gwangju. President Lee Jae-myung urged sufficient deliberation, and the government said abolishing supplementary investigation powers requires an effective alternative. Yet the Democratic Party appears poised to ram the bill through before its Aug. 17 party convention.
Han Byung-do, the Democratic Party's acting leader and floor leader, stresses that abolishing supplementary investigation powers is an "unshakable principle." But recent cases speak even more powerfully to the need to keep them. Police discovered cable ties in the car of Jang Yun-gi, the murderer of the high school girl, but concealed the finding, and looked the other way as Jang's father, an incumbent police officer, destroyed evidence. These facts would never have come to light without the supplementary investigation by the Gwangju District Prosecutors' Office. In another case, an incident that police referred to prosecutors as a fraud involving around 30 million won turned out, after a supplementary investigation by the Changwon District Prosecutors' Office, to be an organized financial fraud worth around 40 billion won. If prosecutors' supplementary investigations are eliminated despite all this, the harm to the public is bound to grow.
If the Democratic Party forces through the abolition, even the minimal means of checking shoddy police investigations and investigative corruption will disappear. Supplementary investigation authority is an essential cross-verification mechanism for correcting errors by investigative agencies and protecting victims' rights. Even in a survey on supplementary investigation powers by the progressive-leaning Lawyers for a Democratic Society (MINBYUN), opinions in favor of retention exceeded two-thirds, with 45.9 percent supporting partial retention and 21.1 percent supporting full retention. MINBYUN pointed out that discussions on abolishing supplementary investigation powers must not be driven by political interests or antipathy toward the prosecution.
Even now, the Democratic Party should accept President Lee's and the Justice Ministry's calls for a cautious approach and halt its hasty legislative march. If it ignores the public's will and forces through legislation abolishing supplementary investigation powers, there is grave concern that criminals will run rampant and citizens will be left trembling in fear. The responsibility for turning its back on the people by abolishing supplementary investigation powers will rest solely with the Democratic Party. The goal of criminal justice reform must lie solely in protecting the public's rights and interests — preventing unjust victimization and uncovering the substantive truth. Prosecution reform that ignores this fundamental principle is not reform but regression.
