Cho Kuk, head of the Rebuilding Korea Party's Innovation Policy Institute, said President Lee Jae-myung's alleged violation of the Public Official Election Act should be resolved through a dismissal of prosecution enabled by legal revision rather than through withdrawal of the indictment.
Cho made the remarks on his Facebook page on the 6th, calling for a plenary vote on an amendment to the Public Official Election Act that he said has been sitting idle for a year and a half. He argued that if the bill passes, it would open the way for dismissal rulings in both the ongoing case involving former President Yoon Suk-yeol and the case against Lee that will resume after his term ends.
The bill Cho referred to was introduced by Rep. Shin Jung-hoon of the Democratic Party of Korea. It would remove the word "act" from the elements of the offense of publishing false information. If the bill passes, the legal grounds for punishment would disappear even if the president's trial continues. A trial that ends on those grounds results in a dismissal of prosecution. Withdrawal of an indictment, by contrast, is a procedure in which a prosecutor retracts charges he or she has filed.
Cho had earlier said that unless the Supreme Court reverses its legal reasoning again, a guilty verdict is highly likely in the appellate trial that will resume after the president's term.
"The element of 'act' in the offense of publishing false information was added when the Public Official Election Act was revised in 2000," Cho said. He stressed that the concept is far broader and vaguer than the other elements and has drawn criticism for inviting arbitrary enforcement, adding that revising the law is not a matter of progressive versus conservative or left versus right.
Meanwhile, the Rebuilding Korea Party criticized the government's organizational plan for the new Prosecution Service as running counter to the purpose of prosecution reform. Party leader Shin Jang-sik called it legislation that relies on tricks and expedients while leaving the prosecution's vested interests intact, and urged that the authorized number of rank-and-file prosecutors be cut by more than one-third.
