Song Kyung-ho, former chief of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office who led investigations into the Daejang-dong and Baekhyeon-dong development corruption allegations under the Yoon Suk-yeol administration, sharpened his criticism of the National Assembly's parliamentary probe into "political prosecution fabrication allegations," saying it "has degenerated into an 'engineered investigation' designed to produce a specific conclusion rather than uncover the truth."
In a statement released Wednesday, Song said, "It is already widely known that the primary goal of this hearing is not to uncover the substantive truth, but rather to brand investigations involving the top power holder as 'fabrication,' use it as justification to launch a special counsel probe, and ultimately neutralize the prosecution of those involved to grant them impunity."
Song led investigations into the Daejang-dong development corruption allegations and the Ssangbang-ul North Korea remittance case during his two-year tenure as Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office chief starting in May 2022. Ruling party lawmakers have claimed that the Daejang-dong investigation team fabricated the case by designating President Lee Jae-myung — who had not been formally booked — as a "suspect" during the investigation and indictment process.
After appearing and testifying before the parliamentary probe regarding the Daejang-dong case on the 16th, Song released a statement on the 19th arguing that "the legislature's intervention in an ongoing trial undermines the principle of separation of powers."
"The very name of the National Assembly Special Committee — 'Special Committee for the Investigation of the Yoon Suk-yeol Administration's Political Prosecution Fabrication Indictment Allegations' — means that the preconceived notion of 'fabricated indictment' was already taken as established fact before the investigation even began," he stressed.
"The more serious issue is that the ultimate beneficiary of these unconstitutional attempts will be the 'power elite,'" he said. "If the spectacle of summoning public officials to the National Assembly and personally humiliating them before the entire nation — solely because they conducted legitimate investigations according to law and principle — continues to be repeated, what public official in the future will be able to uphold the gravity of the law against living power?"
Regarding the ruling party's claim that President Lee's name does not appear in the "Jung Young-hak recordings," Song countered that it was "a distortion of facts that selectively cites only part of the entire record."
"In the transcripts running over 1,300 pages, the words 'Lee Jae-myung' or 'Mayor' are confirmed as many as 21 times," Song said. "Repeating the false claim that 'the name does not appear even once' while ignoring objectively existing real names and records is 'selective blindness' that turns away from the substantive truth and an act of deceiving the public."
He also pointed out that South Korea's criminal justice system is not structured in a way that allows for "fabricated indictments." "Deploying appropriately sized dedicated personnel for investigating large-scale corruption crimes such as the Daejang-dong case is a legitimate exercise of public duty," he said. "Claiming that full-scale fabrication targeting a specific individual is possible is no different from denying the electoral system — the democratic foundation of our society — and subscribing to baseless 'election fraud' allegations. It is extreme irrationalism."
