The situation in which 110 incumbent prosecutors have been dispatched to the special counsels for Kim Keon-hee, insurrection, and the fallen Marine is also disrupting trials involving former President Moon Jae-in and President Lee Jae-myung. The 110 figure is comparable to the entire number of prosecutors at the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors' Office. In the legal community, there is talk that "concerns that mass secondment to special counsels would create gaps in prosecutors' indictment maintenance work have become a reality."
According to the legal community on the 10th, only one prosecutor from the trial division of the Seongnam branch of the Suwon District Prosecutors' Office appeared at the trial held the previous day at the Seongnam branch of the Suwon District Court for the "Seongnam FC sponsorship allegations." Until recently, four to five attended, including the prosecutor involved in the investigation and prosecutors from the Seongnam branch. Presiding judge Heo Yong-gu said, "Having a single trial prosecutor who has never conducted the trial in this case handle the proceedings appears highly inappropriate and irresponsible."
The case alleges that when Lee was Seongnam mayor from 2014 to 2018, he made corporations including Naver and Doosan Engineering & Construction pay 13.35 billion won in Seongnam FC sponsorships in return for granting approvals and permits to four corporations. Lee's trial is on hold, while trials continue for the businesspeople accused of involvement, Seongnam FC executives and employees, and Seongnam city officials.
The reason only a single prosecutor ended up participating in this case's trial is that dispatching prosecutors to the special counsels has increased the overall workload at frontline prosecutors' offices. According to data the Ministry of Justice submitted to People Power Party lawmaker Na Kyung-won's office, as of the 1st, 56 were dispatched to the insurrection special counsel, 40 to the Kim Keon-hee special counsel, and 14 to the fallen Marine special counsel. By office, the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office had the most with 27, followed by the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors' Office (17), the Daegu District Prosecutors' Office (7), the Supreme Public Prosecutors' Office and the Busan District Prosecutors' Office (6), the Daejeon District Prosecutors' Office (5), and the Suwon District Prosecutors' Office (4).
There was also the impact of Justice Minister Jeong Seong-ho's instruction to "refrain from having investigating prosecutors appear for trials at courts outside their jurisdiction." Prosecutors' duty stations typically change every one to two years. As court trials have grown longer, it has become common for the prosecutor who investigated and indicted a case to receive a personnel transfer to another prosecutors' office midtrial. In such instances, prosecutors would send the investigating prosecutor on a one-day acting-duty dispatch to the prosecutors' office with jurisdiction over the court where the trial was being held to enter the trial.
However, in the Seongnam FC sponsorship trial earlier, Director General Heo ordered the prosecutor to leave, saying that a "one-day acting-duty appointment is unlawful." Afterward, following the Minister Jeong's instruction, the Supreme Public Prosecutors' Office reportedly issued guidance to frontline prosecutors' offices to "refrain from issuing acting-duty appointments for trials, and have only one or two prosecutors enter the trial."
At the second preparatory hearing for former President Moon Jae-in's bribery charges held the previous day at the Seoul Central District Court, all the prosecutors involved in the investigation and indictment were absent from the proceedings, prompting the prosecution to appeal to the bench to "give us more time to prepare the materials." Moon was indicted in May on charges of granting personnel and business favors to Lee Sang-jik, former Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker and de facto owner of T'way Air, and enabling his daughter Da-hye and son-in-law, Mr. Seo, to receive 217 million won in bribes.
In this case, the court ordered the prosecution to submit a list of evidence by the middle of next month and to sort the evidence by each count. The prosecution asked for more time, saying, "We have only two personnel." They also said, "The prosecutors attending today's hearing are neither the prosecutors who handled the investigation in this case, nor the prosecutors who filed the indictment, nor the prosecutors who attended the first preparatory hearing."
This situation is expected to worsen going forward. That is because the Democratic Party of Korea plans to put to a vote at the National Assembly plenary session as early as this week a bill to revise the special counsel law to increase the number of dispatched prosecutors. If the revision passes, the number of dispatched prosecutors will rise by 50, from a maximum of 120 to 170.