Justice Minister nominee Han Dong-hoon expressed concern Saturday about bipartisan bills aimed at reducing and eventually scrapping the prosecution’s investigative powers.
The ruling Democratic Party (DP) and the main opposition People Power Party (PPP) on Friday agreed to pass the compromise legislation proposed by National Assembly Speaker Park Byeong-seug within this month.
“Even the current system brought by the 2020 revision exposed many side effects and loopholes in protecting the common people and tackling corruption,” Han said in a statement.
He was referring to the latest law amendments that limited the prosecution’s investigation to six types of crime, including corruption and economic offenses.
“If the additional legislation is hastily enacted without a close analysis and social consensus, the problems will worsen severely,” he said.
Han, a high-level prosecutor and one of President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol’s closest confidants, was nominated to head the justice ministry on April 13. Yoon is affiliated with the PPP.
Last week, Han slammed the DP’s move to weaken the prosecution, saying it would hamper the fight against crimes and end up hurting ordinary people.
After the two parties reached the agreement Friday, Prosecutor General Kim Oh-soo, his deputy and the chiefs of all six high prosecutors’ offices across the nation offered to resign in protest.
Under the compromise deal, the prosecution will temporarily keep its investigative right, with the number of types of crime that it can investigate further reduced to two — corruption and economic crimes.
The deal calls for scrapping the prosecution’s investigative power after the capabilities of other investigative authorities improve and creating a special judiciary reform committee to discuss the establishment of a major crime investigative unit like the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Source: Yonhap News Agency