Ruling, opposition parties clash again at prosecutors' audit over Lee's alleged pressure to drop charges

Ruling and opposition lawmakers clashed again Thursday at the National Assembly's Legislation and Judiciary Committee audit of the Public Prosecution Service over whether President Lee Jae Myung had pressured prosecutors to drop charges against him.

People Power Party lawmaker Kwak Gyu-taek said the president had gone so far as to urge the withdrawal of indictments at a Cabinet meeting in June, with the then-acting prosecutor general present. "He said that if something was done wrong, one should apologize and withdraw it — isn't that a call to drop the charges?" Kwak said. "It is highly inappropriate to keep applying pressure at Cabinet meetings."

Kwak added that among the cases the Committee for a Future of Prosecutors Respecting Human Rights had referred to its fact-finding team, some involved the president directly. "These are cases still in their first-instance trials — the intent is to have the charges dropped," he said.

Fellow PPP lawmaker Kim Min-jeon also weighed in, saying Acting Prosecutor General Lee Jeong-hyeon had apologized for what he called "unrestrained" investigative conduct in connection with a case involving illicit remittances to North Korea. "Would he have apologized if it were not the president's case?" Kim said.

Democratic Party lawmaker Kim Han-gyu rebuffed the criticism, saying no one had ordered or even reviewed a withdrawal of charges. "Charges can only be dropped in cases where a first-instance verdict has not yet been issued, and even then, if new evidence emerges, prosecutors can re-indict," he said.

Kim said the PPP's attacks were baseless. "New evidence could always lead to a fresh indictment — yet the groundless political offensive keeps going," he said.

Democratic Party lawmaker Kim Dong-a also pressed the acting prosecutor general, asking why his office had not launched an internal investigation after a parliamentary probe into fabricated indictments uncovered alleged illegal interviews and the falsification of official documents.

The two sides also traded barbs at the audit over the Moon Jae-in administration's forced repatriation of two North Korean defectors.