Justice minister nominee draws line on dropping charges against Lee, vows to fight 'new drug lobbying' allegations

Kim Seung-won, nominee for justice minister, said Thursday he has no intention of intervening to drop criminal charges against President Lee Jae Myung, stating he lacks the direct authority to withdraw an indictment and has no plans to issue such a directive through the prosecutor general.

Kim made the remarks on his first day at the confirmation hearing preparation office in Jongno-gu, Seoul, when reporters asked whether his previously stated position on dropping the charges against President Lee remained unchanged. "As a lawmaker, I conveyed the public's view that the state must correct the wrong of an indictment fabricated through illegal investigation," he said. "As a justice minister nominee, I will act in accordance with the law and principles." Asked whether he believed the minister's power of direction needed to be exercised, he replied, "No," adding, "That is a matter for the prosecutor handling the case to decide. As a nominee, I have absolutely no intention of reviewing the use of the minister's directive authority." While the justice minister cannot directly withdraw an indictment, the minister may, under law, direct and supervise the prosecutor general.

Kim also addressed allegations that have grown since his nomination — that he lobbied for the expedited approval of a COVID-19 treatment clinical trial. He said prosecutors had conducted an intensive three-year investigation from 2021, deploying more than 10 prosecutors, and ultimately declined to indict. "The reasons were, first, that it was difficult to regard the contact as an improper solicitation, and second, that there was no irregularity — no preferential treatment, no special accommodation, no procedural shortcuts — in the clinical trial approval process," he said.

He said prosecutors should therefore have cleared him of all charges outright, but instead issued a suspended indictment on the grounds that he had introduced a method of providing support. "I consider that unjust as well, which is why I filed a constitutional complaint last year against the suspended indictment decision," he said, adding that the Constitutional Court is reviewing the case. "I want to clear my name of this injustice, no matter what it takes," he said.

Earlier, Kim had been investigated by prosecutors on allegations that in October 2021 he contacted the then-commissioner of the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety at the request of an acquaintance surnamed Yang, asking that work related to a COVID-19 treatment clinical trial being developed by a pharmaceutical company be processed quickly. The Seoul Western District Prosecutors Office issued a suspended indictment against Kim in December 2024.

Kim said in February last year that he would file a constitutional complaint with the Constitutional Court over the suspended indictment, and he did so three months later, in May of that year. A suspended indictment is a prosecutorial disposition in which prosecutors determine that charges are substantiated but conclude the case does not warrant referral to trial, closing the matter without prosecution. Although it is technically a non-indictment decision, it carries a finding that the alleged offense occurred — only the referral to trial is withheld — meaning the subject may challenge it through a constitutional complaint on the grounds that the charges themselves should not have been recognized and that the suspended indictment is therefore unjust. The Constitutional Court accepted Kim's complaint on May 7 last year and referred it to the full bench on July 1 of the same year. No ruling has been issued yet.

Against this backdrop, the controversy has deepened as specific details of the alleged solicitation have emerged. Independent lawmaker Han Dong-hoon cited on Wednesday a text message Kim allegedly sent on Oct. 12, 2021, to Kim Kang-rip, the former commissioner of the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, posting about it on social media. Han said he was putting a public question to Kim: "Did you send a solicitation text message to then-commissioner Kim Kang-rip — after receiving a request from broker Yang — asking him to help secure clinical trial approval for Genencell's COVID-19 treatment, saying: 'I'm told the work is divided among three offices: the Herbal Medicine Division, the Clinical Trial Regime Division, and the Statistical Analysis Team. Please ask the staff in charge to process this quickly. The company is Genencell. I mentioned it because I was also concerned about capital outflow. Thank you, Commissioner'?"

Kim's confirmation hearing preparation team issued a statement Thursday titled "Facts Regarding the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety Allegations Concerning Justice Minister Nominee Kim Seung-won," saying his contact with the commissioner "was not a request to approve a treatment but a simple relay of a public-interest grievance," and that he had asked the commissioner to ensure that the clinical trial procedures of a domestic small and medium-sized enterprise were not unfairly delayed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The team also said Kim had not requested approval of the treatment, priority review, relaxation of standards, or any procedural shortcuts, and that seven Ministry of Food and Drug Safety officials had stated there had been no separate instructions or special reports from the commissioner. "Relaying a citizen's grievance for the purpose of handling public complaints is explicitly permitted under the anti-graft law applicable to lawmakers," the statement added.

The preparation team also said prosecutors had not determined that relaying the grievance was itself unlawful, noting that prosecutors had found it "difficult to conclude that the solicitation itself was unlawful" given that the request was simply to process the clinical trial plan approval quickly in light of the COVID-19 pandemic at the time, and that no unusual violations of regulations or procedural manuals had been identified during the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety's review process.

On being nominated, Kim said he felt "a weighty sense of responsibility," adding that he was driven by "an important sense of mission to ensure that the new criminal justice system — being implemented for the first time in 70 years — takes root without causing inconvenience to the public."