Park Chul-woo, head of the Seoul Central District Prosecution Service, said he "cannot hide mixed feelings" about the abolition of the Prosecutors' Office and its conversion into a prosecution service focused solely on indictments and trials. He also ruled out any discussion of withdrawing indictments in cases involving President Lee Jae-myung, saying he had neither consulted with the Ministry of Justice nor reviewed the matter.
Park made the remarks on the 19th at a National Assembly Legislation and Judiciary Committee audit of the Seoul Metropolitan Prosecution Service and other agencies, responding to a question from Rep. Kwak Kyu-taek of the People Power Party about his thoughts on the abolition of the Prosecutors' Office. "I, too, cannot hide my mixed feelings," he said.
"Among the prosecution's many functions, directly rooting out grave wrongdoing was a very important part. Not only is that function disappearing, but so is the supplementary investigation function that allowed us to take another look at the work of primary investigative agencies such as the police and review whether anything was lacking from the public's standpoint," he said.
He added that "there are functions the prosecution must perform for the public," stressing that he intends "to do my best without clinging to the past, for as long as it takes."
The possibility of withdrawing indictments in criminal cases involving President Lee also came up at the audit. Asked by Rep. Yoon Sang-hyun of the People Power Party whether he had offered an opinion to or consulted with the central prosecution service headquarters or the Ministry of Justice about withdrawing indictments in cases related to the president, Park said, "No such thing has occurred."
"I understand that public interest in the cases involving the president is very high, but they are no different from any other case," Park said. "As a matter of principle, I cannot say what will be done in individual cases, and in other cases as well, we do not discuss whether to indict or detain someone at a parliamentary audit."
He also distanced himself from the Ministry of Justice's fact-finding team under its Future Committee on Respect for Human Rights in the Prosecution, which some have said could be used to justify pushing for the withdrawal of indictments in cases related to the president. "I am not involved in its work," he said.
Park also said that a shortage of trial prosecutors makes it difficult in practice to assign one trial prosecutor to each court division.
Asked by Rep. Park Eun-jung of the Rebuilding Korea Party whether the Seoul Central District Prosecution Service could implement a system of one trial prosecutor per court division, Park said each trial prosecutor at the Seoul Central District Prosecution Service currently handles about 1.4 court divisions on average. "Staffing conditions are very poor at the moment," he said. He added that additional personnel were deployed as of Oct. 2 to bring the figure down to 1.4 divisions per prosecutor, and that "this is how it will have to remain for several months."