President Lee Jae-myung on the 25th addressed lax discipline at the police, including case fabrication and cover-ups, saying, "Because the number (of police) is so large, as the saying goes, 'there is no day without wind for a tree with many branches,' problems like these can arise in various places." He then ordered the Prime Minister's Office to prepare reform measures, including forming a "police reform body."
The recent police problems stem from a vast organization and structural flaws, and are not issues to be linked to the abolition of prosecutors' supplementary investigation authority.
At a cabinet meeting that morning, Lee said, "Recently, lax discipline in the police and irresponsibility regarding public safety have emerged quite seriously, but in fact these police problems are nothing new." He added, "We must make constant efforts to minimize those problems, and in fact we need to overhaul the system to solve them," saying the organization should be restructured, including "strengthening accountability of the leadership."
In particular, Lee said, "It seems the police will now exercise the greatest power among state institutions going forward," and "the public harbors doubts about whether they can fully carry out this great authority and responsibility." Lee then asked Prime Minister Han Seong-sook to "consider a police reform body on how to reform the police," and to "gather public opinion widely on how to carry out police reform and compose a plan."
◇ Case burial and false closures … from October, supplementary investigations also in police hands
The president's remarks came as issues of police case burial and organizational laxity have emerged as major social problems ahead of the Oct. implementation of the Criminal Procedure Act provisions led by the Democratic Party of Korea to abolish "prosecutors' supplementary investigation authority." In line with Lee's presidential campaign pledge, the government abolished the Prosecution Service and separated prosecutors' investigation and indictment functions into the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency and the Public Prosecution Agency. On top of that, prosecutors' supplementary investigation authority was completely scrapped.
The "Busan roundhouse kick case," the "valley murder case," and the "Inha University campus fall case" were cases that were nearly buried at the initial police investigation stage or handled as simple crimes, but were fully uncovered through prosecutors' supplementary investigations. However, under the amended Criminal Procedure Act, prosecutors can no longer conduct supplementary investigations themselves. Instead, they can only "request" the police to conduct supplementary investigations.
Following confirmation of police case burial, fabrication, and cover-ups sparked by the "Jang Yun-gi case," the "Jeju missing woman case" also exposed broader problems in investigative capacity and organizational discipline. With prosecutors excluded from investigative authority, concerns are growing that public harm will surge because there are few checks on shoddy police investigations and organizational concealment. Various opinion polls have also shown that negative responses to abolishing supplementary investigation authority are in the majority.
Cheong Wa Dae and the government, while pledging a "thorough investigation," maintain that there is no change in their existing course on prosecutorial reform, including abolishing supplementary investigation authority. They say that because the police organization is vast and the problems are structural, strengthening accountability will suffice, and these issues are not caused by abolishing prosecutorial investigative authority. Lee said, "When power is concentrated, problems grow," and "even for the same problem, the greater the authority, the greater the impact, so responsibility must be strengthened in proportion to the size of the authority."