"In the past, filing a complaint was enough — police and prosecutors would handle the rest on their own. Going forward, people will need to hire a lawyer just to get a case properly registered. The privatization of justice is likely to accelerate," said Park Yong-cheol, a professor at Sogang University School of Law.
The People Power Party held an emergency forum Tuesday urging the president to veto a revised Code of Criminal Procedure that would completely abolish prosecutors' direct investigation authority and supplementary investigation powers — a bill that cleared a Cabinet meeting the same day. The forum was co-hosted by lawmakers Na Kyung-won and Kim Mi-ae, among others.
PPP leader Jang Dong-hyeok said at the forum that "the people will ultimately reject the Lee Jae Myung regime," adding that abolishing the supplementary investigation powers would lead to the regime's own demise. "If they add grounds for dismissing indictments to erase 'Lee Jae Myung's crimes,' the people will begin erasing the Lee Jae Myung regime itself," he said.
Na also criticized the Democratic Party of Korea for pushing through the bill despite widespread public opposition and the resignations of both the justice minister and the acting prosecutor general. "The gates of hell have opened," she said. "The Democratic Party rammed through this revision to the end." Rep. Kim condemned the party for quietly inserting the dismissal-of-indictment provision after PPP lawmakers walked out of the National Assembly's Legislation and Judiciary Committee.
Experts at the forum were united in warning that the revised bill carries the risk of being used as a political tool.
Ji Seong-woo, a professor at Sungkyunkwan University School of Law, said suspicions that procedural laws such as the Code of Criminal Procedure are being used to steer the outcome of specific cases "fundamentally undermine public trust in both the legislature and the judiciary." He called for an explicit provision stating that the law would not apply to cases already indicted before its effective date, arguing that such a clause was needed to institutionally guarantee the bill was not targeting any particular trial.
mp1256@heraldcorp.com
