Bahk Eun-ji has been with The Korea Times since 2012, building a career across multiple desks. She began at the Business Desk, where she conducted in-depth interviews with key figures in Korea's corporate world. Later, she moved to the Politics & City Desk, focusing on education policy and social affairs. She later served as team leader of the digital content team, leading curation efforts on the newspaper’s homepage and reshaping print stories for social media audiences to enhance digital reach. Now back on the Politics Desk, she covers the National Assembly and the Ministry of National Defense, with a renewed focus on political developments.
S. Korea grapples with long-standing debate over presidential pardons
Cho Kuk, former head of the Rebuilding Korea Party who was sentenced to two years in prison for charges including college admissions fraud involving his child and obstruction of a presidential office inspection, waves to supporters before entering the Seoul Detention Center in Uiwang, Gyeonggi Province, in this Dec. 16, 2024, photo. Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk
By Bahk Eun-ji
As Korea’s Liberation Day approaches, a familiar and charged political debate has resurfaced: the scope and purpose of presidential clemency. This perennial discussion requires examining fundamental questions about the nature of a president’s pardon power in a nation still grappling with its democratic evolution.
Within the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), prominent voices, including Rep. Kang Deuk-gu, have publicly urged President Lee Jae Myung to grant former Justice Minister Cho Kuk a special pardon, contending that Cho and his family have endured sufficient hardship. The high-profile nature of this advocacy was underscored by an unusual personal visit to Cho from National Assembly Speaker Woo Won-shik, a gesture that immediately drew national attention.
While the presidential office has moved to tamp down speculation — with spokesperson Kang Yu-jung asserting last week that “no discussions have been held” and underscoring the pardon as the president’s “exclusive constitutional prerogative” — the mere mention of Cho’s name has set off a broader public debate. The conversation has spilled beyond partisan lines, prompting renewed debate over the historical role, symbolic weight and political calculus behind presidential clemency in modern South Korea.
History of forgiveness
In South Korea, presidential pardons have long been cloaked in the language of “national unity,” yet they have seldom been granted without an undercurrent of political calculation.
In 1993, President Kim Young-sam inaugurated the post-authoritarian era with a sweeping pardon of more than 40,000 pro-democracy activists — an immediate signal of reform. His successor, Kim Dae-jung, went further. Amid the fallout of the Asian financial crisis, he extended clemency to former military strongmen Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo, who had been convicted of treason and mutiny for orchestrating the 1979 coup and brutally suppressing the 1980 Gwangju uprising. These were the very men who had once condemned Kim to death. The gesture became a potent emblem of what South Koreans refer to as “the politics of forgiveness.”
Subsequent presidents have followed this approach, each presenting clemency as an act of reconciliation.
Former President Roh Moo-hyun granted clemency to senior officials imprisoned over the so-called “cash-for-summit” scandal — a secret $500 million transfer to North Korea orchestrated under his predecessor to pave the way for the landmark 2000 inter-Korean summit — declaring it was time to move beyond “political revenge.”
Nearing the end of his term, President Moon Jae-in granted pardons to former President Lee Myung-bak and Kim Kyung-soo, a former governor turned lawmaker, citing the need for “national harmony.” His successor, Yoon Suk Yeol, likewise evoked the language of “political integration” as he extended clemency to figures across party lines — a gesture that preceded his own dramatic political decline.
These gestures were never solely acts of mercy. More often than not, presidential pardons in Korea have been closely intertwined with the political imperatives of the moment.
Former Presidents Chun Doo-hwan, right, and Roh Tae-woo stand during their sentencing hearing at Courtroom 417 of the Seoul District Court in this Aug. 26, 1996, photo. Yonhap
Cho Kuk dilemma
Now, Cho Kuk has emerged as the latest flashpoint.
The former justice minister and recent leader of the Rebuilding Korea Party is serving a two-year prison sentence for his role in a college admissions fraud case involving his daughter, and for obstructing a probe into alleged misconduct by a senior aide during his tenure as presidential chief of staff. Though he has served only a portion of his sentence, some lawmakers contend the punishment was disproportionate — and argue that his political record, including his outspoken opposition to the previous Yoon administration, merits clemency.
Public opinion is evenly split.
A recent poll found that 47.1 percent of respondents support pardoning Cho, while 48.9 percent oppose it. To his supporters, pardoning Cho would signal a commitment to rectifying perceived injustices perpetrated by previous prosecutors. To his critics, however, it is favoritism, with an elite being spared the consequences of crimes that have sent ordinary people to prison.
The debate also highlights a deeper tension within Korean democracy. The presidential pardon is one of the few remnants of a bygone era to survive the transition to modern governance. It grants the head of state the extraordinary power to overrule a court’s final judgment — a remarkable authority in a system that otherwise upholds the separation of powers. Critics dismiss it as “a relic of royal privilege.”
Yet presidents have rarely resisted using it. Each time, they have invoked the idea of healing wounds and uniting the nation. The case of Cho has laid bare that contradiction once again.
For President Lee Jae Myung, this year’s Liberation Day — his first in office — will be a test of how he wields power. The Ministry of Justice is preparing a list of names for the Aug. 15 amnesty announcement. Whether or not Cho’s name appears on these lists will signal how Lee interprets his role as custodian of one of the Constitution’s most powerful — and controversial — tools.