On the 8th, a district court ruled that the dismissal imposed on Rebuilding Korea Party lawmaker Park Eun-jung for allegedly being involved, as a prosecutor, in the so-called "Yoon Suk-yeol and Han Dong-hoon inspections" should be revoked.
The court found that Park's use of Channel A case investigative materials for the inspection of then-Prosecutor General Yoon Suk-yeol and her instruction to revise the inspection report constituted grounds for discipline. However, it did not accept the ground that she disclosed the materials externally, and it determined that dismissing her—depriving her of prosecutorial status—was excessive based on the remaining grounds alone.
The Seoul Administrative Court's Administrative Division 4 (Presiding Judge Kim Young-min, senior judge) ruled for the plaintiff in a suit filed by Park against the Minister of Justice seeking to cancel the disciplinary action. The panel ordered the president to revoke the dismissal imposed on Park on Mar. 6, 2024.
Park served as inspection officer at the Ministry of Justice from Feb. 2020 to Jul. 2021. At the time, the Criminal Division 1 of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office was investigating the "Channel A case," in which a Channel A reporter allegedly tried to coerce a former SillaJen shareholder to testify about wrongdoing by political figures by invoking ties to a senior prosecutor. The team, with court approval, obtained then-Chief Prosecutor Han Dong-hoon's communications records and an investigative report analyzing them.
Park requested related records from the investigative team for the inspection of then-Chief Prosecutor Han, but was refused. After initiating an inspection of the former prosecutor general Yoon, she again demanded submission of the materials, and the team submitted the communications records and investigative report to the Ministry of Justice inspection officer's office. Park had these materials placed in the inspection file for the former prosecutor general Yoon and included some of the contents in materials for the Ministry of Justice Inspection Committee meeting.
Her instruction to revise the inspection report also became an issue. Park told prosecutor Lee Jeong-hwa to remove from the report the point that then-Prosecutor General Yoon's instruction to draft the so-called "bench analysis document" did not constitute the offense of abuse of authority to obstruct the exercise of rights. The report with that portion removed was then rewritten as of Nov. 16, 2020, and included in the record.
The panel determined that making the Channel A case materials—secured for that investigation—be used for the inspection of the former prosecutor general Yoon, where objective or personal relevance was not recognized, amounted to making the investigative team perform an act not required by duty. It also found that using the communications records and other materials in the inspection and disciplinary procedures constituted use for a purpose other than permitted under the Protection of Communications Secrets Act. It further recognized as a disciplinary ground the acts of revising the investigation report after the fact or backdating it and having it rewritten.
However, it did not accept the ground that the materials were disclosed externally. The panel reasoned that, because the Ministry of Justice Inspection Committee is an internal decision-making process conducted behind closed doors, explaining the contents of the materials at the meeting cannot be regarded as external disclosure or leakage.
In the end, the court concluded that while there were some faults, dismissal was excessively severe. It said the recognized disciplinary grounds are closer to errors in judgment or procedural mistakes in the inspection process and differ from typical grave misconduct such as taking bribes or pursuing private gain. The panel found that the dismissal violated the principle of proportionality by being excessive relative to the administrative objective sought, and that it was unlawful as an abuse or deviation of disciplinary discretion.
Park received a dismissal resolution in Feb. 2024 from the Ministry of Justice Prosecutors' Disciplinary Committee after the launch of the Yoon Suk-yeol administration. At the time of the discipline, her post was chief prosecutor of the Gwangju District Prosecutors' Office's Serious Economic Crimes Investigation Unit. Park filed an administrative suit in May of the same year.