[Opinion] A Shameful Lawyer

A 69-year old lawyer, Park Woo-dong, who lived his life as a judge for 33 years, recently published an essay titled “Inside and outside of the lawyer’s office” following another essay “ From judge’s room to the court” that contained some stories during his life as a judge. A series of books written by lawyer Park are worthy to read due to the legal remarks “The judge expresses himself only by his judgment.” There are only a few books that deal with anguish, regrets of judges, and behind-the-scene stories of the judicial authorities. “Inside and outside of the lawyer’s office” is interesting in terms of stories about his experiences of “temptation of money,” while managing his attorney life after having completed his terms as a justice of Supreme Court in the judiciary authorization.

In this book, lawyer Park revealed “there are some clients who find lawyers to offer them money for a good relationship with powerful judges.” He also wrote, “It is quite possible to see such clients who wish to cut down the attorney fees, however they are quite willing to provide lawyers with entertainment expenses.” He told about a humble- looking country man who once asked him for to appeal a case and handed him three million won for entertainment expenses with the engaged justice of the Supreme Court. This appeal ended up being rejected at the Supreme Court, and Park felt so sorry for the disappointed old man because “his offer-required expenses” was not accepted. The lower the criminal case is, the more such entertainment money is likely to be provided.

I previously had a chance to hear another justice of Supreme Court-turned lawyer stressing that he was “opposed to the unification of judges and lawyers that gives access to experienced lawyers becoming judges. Unification of the bench and the bar has been a long desire for the opposition lawyers and is the key issue of legislation reform committee. However, this old lawyer, who experienced the world of a lawyer after retiring from the Supreme Court, said that he was getting doubtful on his prior thought of the unification between the judges and the lawyers and became pessimistic on the idea. He asked himself how many lawyers would pay the taxes, which often made scandals involving brokers for bringing cases. He regretted who will judge the people if these lawyers are acting as judges.

There are lawyers like Park who refuse the offer of entertainment expenses, whereas some lawyers seem to request money to their clients first. Among the corrupted lawyers that the prosecutor indicted, there is one who received 100 million won as an entertainment expenses for the purpose of “getting linked to the investigation office”. It is absolutely necessary that those lawyers involved in corruption should be rooted out for the sake of the honor of all lawyers. Maybe it could be unfair to demand the same level of ethics for judges to lawyers, who even have to take habitual criminals as their clients. However, it is just unacceptable to call “the corrupted lawyers” as lawyers.

Hwang Ho-Taek, Editorial Writer, hthwang@donga.com