EXPLAINER Why Korea's liberals see Prosecutors' Office as political enemy

A flag bearing the emblem of the Prosecution Service flutters outside its headquarters in southern Seoul, Wednesday. Newsis

The ruling liberal Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) is pushing through a bill that would strip prosecutors of their investigative authority, seeking an end to years of bruising “prosecution reform” battles and what many in the party view as a politicized, uncontrollable power at the heart of the justice system.

Under the new system, investigations and indictments would be split between new agencies, with one dedicated to investigations and the other to bringing charges and shepherding them through trial, effectively dismantling the Prosecutors’ Office's dual role, which was established in 1948.

Distrust rooted in trauma

Many outside observers find the governing party’s relentless campaign to weaken its own prosecutors puzzling, but for Korea’s liberals, the prosecution has come to embody a long history of politicized investigations.

Much of that distrust is rooted in trauma: A probe targeting late former President Roh Moo-hyun, which played a role in his suicide in 2009, cemented an image of prosecutors as political hitmen. Subsequent investigations into key liberal figures, particularly during former Prosecutor General Yoon Suk Yeol's rise to the presidency in 2022, convinced many progressives that the institution bends the law to protect those in power, particularly conservatives, while wielding it aggressively against their own side, according to experts.

“Liberals don’t see this as just a problem of the past, but as something that has continued right up to the present,” Kim Sung-soo, a professor of political science at Hanyang University, told The Korea Times. “They think that the current liberal president is also a victim and in their narrative, it was the prosecution that unjustly made him into a criminal suspect. In that sense, ongoing efforts to cancel indictments against him and reform the prosecution naturally go together.”

From police brutality to prosecutorial power

The prosecution was not always the primary target. In the 1970s and '80s, under the Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan administrations, liberal pro-democracy activists were dragged to interrogation rooms where unlawful police detention, torture and fabricated subversion cases were common. The torture and killing of student activists like Park Jong-chul and the tear gas injury that killed Lee Han-yeol catalyzed the 1987 democracy protests, which were aimed above all at curbing military rule and rampant police brutality.

In the post-1987 legal order, Korea maintained a system in which only prosecutors can ask for arrests and search warrants from judges, effectively placing a formal legal gate between the police and judges. But as the criminal justice system became more legalistic, prosecutors moved to the center of political controversy.

High-profile corruption and political cases turned prosecutors into active political forces, and the investigation into Roh in 2009 crystallized a belief on the liberal side that prosecutorial powers could decide political destinies from behind the scenes. That perception was reinforced when Yoon won the 2022 presidential election after leading probes into liberal figures, including aides to then-President Moon Jae-in.

Risks of shifting power

For many hardline liberals, pushing ahead with breaking up the powers of the prosecution is a way to prevent any future “Yoon scenario,” said Hong Hyeong-sik, a political analyst.

“Because a former prosecutor has already once seized power as a politician representing the conservative camp, the DPK appears to have come to see the prosecution as an ongoing rival in the struggle for political power,” he explained.

But experts warn that simply shifting much of the prosecution power to the police and other institutions could eventually backfire.

“Even while these reforms are being debated, serious corruption cases involving the police have already emerged,” Hong said, referring to a recent scandal around evidence handling in the alleged murder of a schoolgirl in Gwangju. “If something like this happens again, public opinion could swing sharply in the opposite direction, and the law itself may end up being rewritten.”