Presidential secretary for political affairs Hong Ihk-pyo announces that President Lee Jae Myung has asked the DPK to consider public input on the bill for a special counsel to look into fabricated indictments. Yonhap
The June 3 local elections are less than 30 days away. Taking place a year after President Lee Jae Myung won a snap election in the wake of former President Yoon Suk Yeol's December 2024 martial law declaration and subsequent impeachment, it will be the first real chance for voters to assess Lee's administration. Elections in Korea are usually loud and even celebratory, especially in picking grassroots leaders. However, that is not the case this time.
Internal party dynamics seem to be the driving force behind how the local elections are playing out, with the ruling majority Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) looking all but sure to win a hefty number of local offices. The main opposition People Power Party (PPP), stuck with low approval ratings hovering as low as 15 percent, has had difficulty fielding new candidates and chose to rely on nominating incumbents, despite voter disapproval.
Amid this imbalance, the DPK has proposed a new bill that would allow an independent counsel to withdraw indictments in ongoing trials, and also calls for investigations into "fabricated indictments made on fabricated evidence" by the Yoon administration.
The aim of the bill is to probe 12 cases where there are allegations of indictments that relied on fabricated evidence. These include eight cases related to Lee, some of which have already undergone parliamentary investigation under the lead of the DPK. This includes a parliamentary probe that looked into a land development scandal in Gyeonggi Province during the president's tenure as mayor of Seongnam, and the Ssangbangwool North Korea remittance case.
Court proceedings for Lee's land development case were put on hold when he was elected and will resume in June 2030.
One of the more conspicuous aspects of the bill is a provision that would allow a special counsel to decide whether to maintain or drop indictments. In reality, the bill could enable a special counsel to take actions that properly belong to the realm of the prosecutors who made the indictments. It would allow the special counsel to drop cases without court adjudication, an implicit violation of prosecutorial and judicial authority.
Moreover, the proposed bill would permit Lee to appoint a special counsel, which would then be endowed with the authority to determine whether to maintain the indictments against him, which sets up an obvious conflict of interest.
It is a basic principle that everyone stands equal before the law. Defendants in legal cases usually resolve grievances through court proceedings, a laborious process.
The controversy surrounding the bill has lit a fire under the opposition. Both the PPP and the Reform Party have blasted the bill for violating the principles behind prosecutorial and judicial authority, as have legal experts and civic groups. Within the ruling party, candidates running in the more conservative southeastern region, including the DPK's Daegu mayoral candidate Kim Boo-kyum, have requested prudence.
Source: Korea Times News
