Cho Kuk, head of the Rebuilding Korea Party's Innovation Policy Institute, warned on the 1st that the ruling bloc will suffer political and legal setbacks if it presses ahead with a special counsel bill on what it calls fabricated indictments under the Yoon Suk-yeol administration, which includes withdrawing charges against President Lee Jae-myung.
Cho made the remarks in a Facebook post, saying there were points that must be addressed regarding the withdrawal of charges.
On the discussion over dropping the cases involving Lee, Cho said charges do not automatically disappear when a prosecutor withdraws them, and that a trial ends only when the court issues a dismissal ruling. He stressed that Article 255 of the Criminal Procedure Act limits the withdrawal of charges to the period before a first-instance verdict is delivered.
"Charges cannot be withdrawn in cases that are already at the appellate stage," he said, adding that even if a prosecutor decided to withdraw them, the court would refer any law permitting such a step to the Constitutional Court on its own authority. Because some of the cases involving Lee have been suspended while pending at the appellate stage, including them in a withdrawal of charges could create legal problems, he said.
Cho also raised the charge of publishing false information under the Public Official Election Act. The Democratic Party welcomed the guilty verdict against Yoon Suk-yeol on that charge, he said, adding that the ruling faithfully followed the legal reasoning of the Supreme Court's decision to remand Lee's case with a finding of guilt.
"Unless the Supreme Court's reasoning is overturned again, a guilty verdict is highly likely in the appellate trial that will resume after President Lee's term ends," he said. On the possibility of changing the outcome by expanding the number of Supreme Court justices, he said the direct route was to revise the false statement provision itself, noting that such a revision would apply to both Yoon and Lee.
He also called for a cautious approach to pursuing the withdrawal of charges on the grounds of fabricated indictments. To drop charges for that reason, the fabrication itself must first be established, Cho said, adding that the parliamentary investigation conducted before the June 3 election had produced substantial results.
"But that alone is not enough," he said, arguing that evidence of fabrication must be secured through internal inspections by the Justice Ministry or the Supreme Prosecutors' Office of the prosecutors in question, or through an investigation by the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials. With the Justice Ministry's committee on prosecution reform and human rights set to look into six cases — the Daejang-dong development, the alleged remittance to North Korea, the Wirye new town suspicions, Seongnam FC, the Baekhyeon-dong development corruption allegations and the Gyeonggi Province corporate card suspicions — the findings of that review must also be confirmed, he said.
Cho further said the abuse of power by prosecutors under Yoon was not limited to Lee. He pointed to the exit ban on Kim Hak-eui, the alleged interference in the Ulsan mayoral election, the Wolsong nuclear reactor case and the shooting of a fisheries official in the West Sea, saying numerous Moon Jae-in administration officials were targeted in investigations, indicted and are now being acquitted at trial.
"The Democratic Party did not call for withdrawing the charges when those cases were at the first-instance stage," he said, adding that this created the impression that the withdrawal was solely aimed at eliminating President Lee's trials and, as a result, made dropping the charges against Lee more difficult.
"If a law gives the impression that it was created for one particular individual, it will fail," Cho said. He added that cases where charges should be withdrawn at the first-instance stage must be clearly distinguished from those that will have to go to trial after the president's term ends, with measures taken accordingly.
