Seo Young-gyo, chair of the National Assembly's Legislation and Judiciary Committee, visited the Cheongju District Prosecutors Office on Wednesday alongside Democratic Party lawmakers Song Jae-bong, Lee Gang-il and Lee Gwang-hui, as well as Jeon Yong-gi of the same party and Son Sol of the Progressive Party, to raise concerns over a rejected communications warrant and urge a thorough investigation into the child sex-buying case involving Choe Young-jung, a former Cheongju city council member expelled from the People Power Party.
Before meeting with the Cheongju district prosecutor, Seo said, "Buying sex from a child under the age of 13 constitutes statutory rape and sexual exploitation." She said the crime came to light through a complaint filed by the victim's parents, and that in the meantime the suspect had received a People Power Party nomination and been elected to the city council.
She said that while Choe had refused to respond to police summons, his mobile phone and other items had disappeared, and that "evidence is being destroyed day by day even now." She urged that every aspect of Choe Young-jung's crimes be brought to light.
Seo also said that remarks by Kim Jin-mo, a former PPP branch chair in Cheongju's Sangdang District, which appeared to cast doubt on the victim and defend the perpetrator, constituted "clear secondary harm." "This is not something that ends with his resignation as branch chair — the full circumstances must also be thoroughly investigated," she said.
She urged police and prosecutors to pursue the Choe Young-jung case to the end and focus all their efforts on protecting the victim.
In the meeting with the Cheongju district prosecutor, Seo pressed the issue of the rejected communications warrant that police had applied for. She said the warrant would have provided evidence of what transpired between the victim and the perpetrator, as well as any threats the perpetrator may have made to the victim afterward and a means of identifying other victims. She added that she had raised objections to the court treating the warrant "as if it were a separate matter and rejecting it on those grounds."
She said communications records are preserved for only one year, and that there were indications Choe had sent messages to the victim as recently as October last year, making the records directly relevant to the case — yet the court had characterized the warrant as if it pertained to a different victim. She said the case demanded a full examination of its gravity, the potential number of additional victims, the threats the victim faced, the steps the perpetrator was taking to destroy evidence, and whether there was any risk of flight.
She said there was a strong likelihood that additional victims could emerge in large numbers, as in the "N-room" case, and that authorities needed to find and protect other victims while also determining whether other perpetrators were involved.
On the outcome of the meeting, Seo said the Cheongju district prosecutor explained that "the structure was such that the full gravity of the case was not easy to grasp until recently." She said she had asked that police and prosecutors cooperate more closely and provide greater support so that the perpetrator could be properly arrested and punished as soon as possible, and that the prosecutor had replied, "We will do our best to make that happen."
She added that child sexual exploitation crimes "cannot be tolerated under any circumstances," and that prosecutors and police must work in close cooperation to pursue the perpetrator to the end and provide stronger protection for the victim.
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