Acting prosecutor general calls bribery probe of ex-President Moon 'bone-picking investigation'

Acting Prosecutor General Lee Jeong-hyeon said Thursday that the prosecution's bribery investigation into former President Moon Jae-in amounted to what he called a "bone-picking investigation."

Lee, who also serves as deputy chief of the prosecution service, made the remark at the National Assembly's Legislation and Judiciary Committee audit of the prosecution service — formerly the Supreme Prosecutors' Office — when Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker Lee Sung-yoon asked whether the Jeonju District Prosecution Office, which indicted the former president on bribery charges, had conducted a proper investigation.

The lawmaker alleged that prosecutors had engaged in misconduct during the probe. He said a prosecutor contacted the 70-year-old mother of former President Moon's ex-son-in-law 19 times by text and phone and even tracked her down at a bathhouse, warning her that "shielding your in-law will bring serious trouble" — conduct he characterized as stalking. He also said investigators seized a young grandchild's iPad on the grounds that it might contain the daughter's emails.

Lee Sung-yoon further cited remarks made by Seoul Central District Court Judge Lee Hyeon-bok, who presided over the case, at a Nov. 25, 2025 hearing. The judge said at the time: "Prosecutors, defense counsel and the presiding judge all know this case is not a typical one. Whether the investigation itself can be deemed unlawful is naturally also a subject for deliberation." The lawmaker asked whether Lee had ever heard of a court announcing it would examine the legality of an investigation before even considering guilt or innocence. "I don't think I have experienced such a case," the acting prosecutor general replied.

Lee Sung-yoon also said the prosecution "had to be abolished because it shrank endlessly before power and was endlessly arrogant before the people." The acting prosecutor general responded that genuine reform and innovation would require "deep reflection, repentance and a sincere apology for past wrongful investigative practices."

The Jeonju District Prosecution Office indicted former President Moon last year in April on aggravated bribery charges under the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Crimes, concluding that the salary paid to his former son-in-law after the man was hired by airline T'way Air constituted a bribe. A first-instance citizen-participation trial for the former president is scheduled for January.

The Ministry of Justice's Committee for Respecting Prosecutors' Human Rights and Building a Better Future, which is investigating allegations of prosecutorial abuse of investigative authority, selected the case in August as a subject of its second fact-finding inquiry and has been examining it since.