Constitutional Court Delays Final Hearing on Impeachment of President to April 30

The Constitutional Court (Chief Justice Yoon Young-chul) has decided to delay the final hearing on the impeachment of President Roh Moo-hyunm originally scheduled for Tuesday to 2 p.m. Friday afternoon on April 30. The reason for the delay is that the prosecution refused to submit its investigation records on Roh’s aides who were implicated in corruption scandals, to which the Assembly attorneys repelled. The Assembly attorneys requested the court ask the prosecution to send the related documents when the sixth public hearing began at 2 p.m. The court was suspended over an hour and decided on the delay after a conference.

Justice Yoon said “If they specify what they want to verify through the prosecution’s investigation on the implicated corruption scandals and investigation records, and submit it by April 28 in the morning, we will examine whether to adopt it or not.”

To this, the lawyers replied, “It is virtually impossible to specify the records and submit them due to the particularity of the prosecution’s private investigation, and we don’t know what kind of investigation is included in the secret examination and inspection.” Their protest was not accepted.

Earlier, the prosecution revealed that “most of the materials about the implicated corruption scandals were sent to the court, and some secret materials were not submitted according to the provisory clause of the law of the Constitutional Court that says ‘records of incidents under investigation cannot be sent’.”

Sang-Rok Lee myzodan@donga.com