By Lee Kyung-min
A total of 101 judges nationwide will attend a meeting today to discuss measures about the “blacklist of judges.”
The list was allegedly created by the Supreme Court to deny promotion of those critical of its chief Justice Yang Sung-tae.
During the single six-year term, the top justice exercises enormous power over personnel affairs of about 3,000 judges and 15,000 judicial employees including 12 Supreme Court justices.
Promotions of judges are reportedly determined to a considerable degree by the political inclinations of the rulings they made on socially and ideologically contentious cases. Yang, appointed by former President Lee Myung-bak, a known conservative, has less than three months until his retirement in September.
The meeting, scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. at the Judicial Research and Training Institute in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, comes four months after the allegation about the list first emerged.
It was alleged that the Office of Court Administration under the Supreme Court, sought to scale down a judges-only academic symposium. Since August 2015, the meeting raised questions about whether the judges are able to make independent rulings free of pressure from a Supreme Court justice or other personnel affairs. Judicial reform was another key agenda item.
The allegation grew larger after the chief of the study group, only identified by his surname Lee, revealed that he was offered a promotion to the Office of Court Administration in what he said was an exchange of his commitment to scale down such “anti-conformist” activities in a phone conversation with Lim Chong-heon, the second-in-command at the office. The chief offered to resign and his promotion was withdrawn.
Following the allegation, Lim, alongside Office of Court Administration head Ko Young-han and Lee Kyu-jin, a standing committee member at the Sentencing Commission under the Supreme Court, resigned amid an allegation they were in charge of such efforts to suppress critical voices within the judiciary.
The Supreme Court then asked Judicial Research and Training Institute professor emeritus Lee In-bok to conduct an internal investigation into the allegation in an effort to allay the fury by the judges, but the outrage was further fueled after his conclusion that there was no such list.
Most judges found it questionable, especially because Lee was unable to examine the computer hard drive where the pass code-locked list was allegedly stored.
The Office of Court Administration refused Lee’s request to go over the files in the computer saying no documents were to be reviewed by individuals other than those who wrote them. It also cited security breach issues in general.
Such an absurd response prompted the Seoul High Court, the most senior and relatively conservative group of judges, to demand the reopening of an internal investigation into the allegation.
According to a study conducted by the symposium, known as a human rights study group, of 502 judges nationwide, almost 90 percent, or 443, said they feared punitive personnel actions if they expressed criticism of the Supreme Court chief justice or court heads.
Almost half, or 45 percent, said they also feared punitive actions if they rule against the administration in power or certain political groups.
Meanwhile, the collective convention of judges is the first in eight years since 2009 when a similar number of judges organized a meeting to protest former Supreme Court chief justice Shin Young-chul.
The meeting was held to demand the resignation of Shin, following the revelation that he, then the Seoul Central District Court head and a major Supreme Court justice candidate in 2008, called and sent emails to judges at the district court who presided over cases involving candlelit street protestors about the import of U.S. beef to promptly rule against them.
The rulings that greatly suited the then President Lee Myung-bak eventually helped Lee appoint Shin as the top judge in Korea. Shin finished his term in full in February 2015.