Besieged ex-chief justice faces new allegation

By Kang Seung-woo

The prosecution has begun investigating a fresh allegation that a former chief justice schemed against the leader of a lawyers' group criticizing his policy to set up a “Second Supreme Court.”

According to the Seoul Central District Prosecutor's Office, Monday, its investigators summoned Ha Chang-woo, a former president of the Korean Bar Association (KBA), as a witness, last Friday, to question whether former Chief Justice Yang Sung-tae applied pressure on him.

The summons occurred three days after the prosecution received 410 files from the National Court Administration (NCA) linked to a power abuse scandal surrounding Yang. He is facing allegations of using high-profile trials as bargaining chips in dealings with the presidential office over organizational changes. The NCA is the top court's administrative body.

Ha, who served as the KBA chief from 2015 to 2017, strongly criticized Yang's plan to establish the new court, denouncing it as an unconstitutional idea designed to keep Supreme Court justices' vested interests. Also, Ha had pushed for policies that the top court disapproved of.

Some of the submitted documents are said to include descriptions of a variety of illegal measures directed toward Ha and his organization as part of efforts to “tame” him including ordering a secret investigation into his assets; collecting his past records of appointment for possible tax evasion; and circulating rumors about him to the media and legal circles to damage his reformist reputation. The NCA even intentionally gave some information to a specific reporter.

They documents were drawn up by top bureaus within the NCA.

“I never expected that the Supreme Court would do such shameful things,” said the former KBA president.

The top court also attempted to adopt an evaluation system on lawyers and cut funding for the KBA Legal Aid Foundation, according to the documents.

In that respect, the prosecution is reviewing whether the documents on Ha amount to further abuse of judicial power and a violation of the Personal Information Protection Law. The top court was already aware of the illegal maneuvers against Ha through three in-house audits that unearthed the 410 documents, but failed to hand them over last month.

Currently, the prosecution is at odds with the top court over the latter's refusal to hand over material related to the power abuse allegations, including hard disks used by Yang and other officials, due to “confidentiality.”

However, prosecutors are set to take advantage of the documents regarding Ha and others to be submitted by the KBA to press the Supreme Court to give them the hard disks.

Meanwhile, the KBA is also reviewing whether to accuse Yang and a former vice minister of the NCA of exerting external pressure on it.

“The top court's misconduct toward an organization of lawyers is a big problem,” said Kim Hyun, the current KBA president.