Han Dong-hoon: 'Dead prosecutors' with no investigative powers come back to life in Democratic Party special counsel

Independent lawmaker Han Dong-hoon on Friday took aim at the investigative powers granted to seconded prosecutors under the so-called fabricated-indictment special prosecutor act, saying "a miracle is happening in which dead prosecutors with no investigative authority are revived the moment they are seconded to the Democratic Party's special counsel."

Han wrote on his Facebook page that he had questioned the Ministry of Justice at a budget committee session Thursday, asking "whether it is not illegal for prosecutors who have already been stripped of investigative authority — dead prosecutors — to have that authority restored simply by being seconded to a special counsel." He said the ministry replied that it understood "there is an exception provision in the Code of Criminal Procedure."

Han called that answer wrong, saying the main text of the Code of Criminal Procedure had deleted the provision granting prosecutors investigative authority and that "the only thing remaining is a single transitional measure in the supplementary provisions."

He went on to say that if the transitional measure alone were sufficient, "there would be no reason to separately insert Article 5 of the supplementary provisions into the National Election Commission special prosecutor act and Article 6 into the fabricated-indictment special prosecutor bill." He added that the Democratic Party was "patching each special prosecutor act with piecemeal supplementary provisions precisely because the Code of Criminal Procedure alone is not enough."

Han said the Democratic Party was itself proving his point, noting that Democratic Party lawmakers had introduced a bill in September to delete the supplementary provision from the National Election Commission special prosecutor act — a move the press had described as a "proposal to abolish seconded prosecutors' investigative authority."

"If the ministry's position were correct, investigative authority should remain even after the supplementary provision is deleted," Han said, before pressing further: "The Democratic Party held up the separation of investigation and indictment as a sacred principle to strip prosecutors of investigative authority — and then handed both investigative and indictment powers to the special counsel of their own making."

"Principles are not something you invoke when convenient and set aside when inconvenient," Han said, criticizing the Democratic Party by arguing that "if prosecutorial investigative authority is dangerous, as the Democratic Party claims, it is equally dangerous in a special counsel." He doubled down, saying "there were no principles from the outset — the law was simply rewritten as needed to eliminate President Lee Jae Myung's trial," and warned that "the democratic republic is collapsing."