Justice Ministry left leaderless as prosecutors' office abolition looms

Justice Minister Jeong Seong-ho has stepped down after President Lee Jae Myung accepted his resignation, leaving the ministry without a head at a critical moment. With the current Prosecutors' Office set to be abolished in October and the criminal justice system facing a sweeping overhaul, the top post at the ministry responsible for overseeing that transition is now vacant. The task of establishing the newly created Public Prosecution Service while minimizing gaps in crime response remains unresolved.

Within the prosecutors' office, frustration and unease are growing. While the government's attention has been focused on the establishment of the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency — led by the Ministry of Interior and Safety — the organizational structure of the Public Prosecution Service has yet to be finalized, sources familiar with the matter said Tuesday. Although the prosecutors' office is to be converted into the Public Prosecution Service and most of its staff are expected to continue working under the new body, the shape of the organization remains unclear with little more than a month before its launch.

With Jeong's departure making the vacancy real, establishing the Public Prosecution Service and putting the criminal justice system in order is widely seen as the top priority for his successor and the ministry. The changes go beyond simply abolishing the prosecutors' office — prosecutors' investigative powers, including supplementary investigation authority, are being eliminated entirely, meaning the entire criminal justice framework is being rebuilt from scratch. That makes the Justice Ministry's role as the lead agency for crime prevention and response all the more critical. Yet front-line prosecutors say they are deeply troubled by the fact that key details about the Public Prosecution Service remain unknown, even as decisions on indictments and the maintenance of prosecutions are set to become more important than ever.

Concerns have also been raised that the revised Code of Criminal Procedure, which takes effect alongside the overhaul in October, leaves prosecutors' authority and responsibilities ambiguous. At a lawyers' conference on the rule of law hosted by the Korean Bar Association on Monday, Park Seon-yeong, a prosecutor at the Legal Research and Training Institute, said the legal character and effect of prosecutors' legal judgments and opinions during investigations "are not clearly defined." Swiftly addressing problems that emerge once the new system is in place is another task the ministry must take on.

Establishing a framework for joint investigation task forces — something President Lee personally called for — is also on the agenda. At a presidential briefing on Aug. 5, Jeong and Interior and Safety Minister Yun Ho-jung clashed over how such task forces should operate. Jeong warned that having prosecutors participate in joint task forces could create problems with the admissibility of evidence, while Yun raised the idea of a joint task force structure involving the Public Prosecution Service, the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency and the police. President Lee instructed both ministers to review the issue and report back.

Nine such joint bodies are currently in operation: a financial and securities crimes task force, a voice phishing task force, a virtual assets crimes task force, a national fiscal crimes joint investigation unit, a joint investigation team for the Itaewon crowd crush, a drug crimes government task force, a task force on collusion between politics and religion, a joint investigation team for illegal pharmaceutical crimes, and a task force on violations of citizens' voting rights. Critics have warned that weak legal grounding for these bodies could expose their investigations to legal challenges.

On Monday, after his resignation was accepted, Jeong told reporters on his way out of the office that once the matter goes to the National Assembly, he would think about "how special judicial police can properly operate and handle individual cases, and what role the Public Prosecution Service should play," given that the legal basis for joint investigations and prosecutors' command authority over special judicial police would be gone.

Attention is also turning to the activities of the ministry's Committee for Prosecutors' Human Rights and Future — known as the Prosecutors' Future Committee — now that Jeong has left. He had personally ordered the creation of the body to investigate alleged human rights violations and abuses of prosecutorial power, and the committee was launched in June. At its request, the Supreme Prosecutors' Office assembled a fact-finding team in June.

The Prosecutors' Future Committee has selected seven cases as its first round of investigation targets, including the Ssangbangul inter-Korean funds transfer case, and 12 cases — including allegations related to Seongnam FC — as its second round. Of the 19 cases under investigation in total, six involve President Lee. A large number of cases involving figures from the broader ruling camp have also been selected for investigation.

With the minister who ordered the committee's creation now gone, observers say the Prosecutors' Future Committee and the fact-finding team will face even greater pressure as they examine allegations of prosecutorial overreach in cases involving the president. The prospect of ruling-camp hard-liners being floated as candidates to succeed Jeong is another factor the committee cannot ignore. Most analysts expect the fact-finding team will be unable to complete its work within its basic 90-day mandate.

Jeong took office in July last year as the first justice minister of the Lee Jae Myung administration, serving just over a year. He clashed at times with hard-liners within the ruling camp over the prosecution reform agenda they championed. Most recently, during the revision of the Code of Criminal Procedure, he spoke out against abolishing prosecutors' supplementary investigation authority, warning it could leave crime victims without recourse.

On Monday, as he left the office, Jeong said he had "done his best for about 13 months to bring change and innovation to the Justice Ministry, but fell short in many ways," adding that he hoped to help from the National Assembly so the ministry could earn the public's trust.

He said the ministry oversees many important areas beyond the prosecutors' office — including crime prevention, corrections, immigration and international litigation — but that these had long been neglected in terms of budget and staffing. "I worked to normalize that, but I leave with regret that I could not see it through," he said.

He went on to say that as minister, he had wrestled with how to ensure that the revision of the Code of Criminal Procedure and the establishment of the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency and the Public Prosecution Service would not leave the public anxious or crime victims without institutional means to seek redress. "In the process, I developed a sleep disorder and reached a point I could no longer endure, which is why I submitted my resignation," he said.