Proving Seoul superintendent`s guilt

Korean prosecutors are under fire for what critics call weak investigation skills, and are said to even "miss the fish they have caught." Though the bankruptcy of Busan Savings Bank involved the squandering of billions of dollars of customer deposits, prosecutors failed to identify the politicians and bureaucrats behind the fiasco. Park Tae-gyu, who is suspected of bribing politicians and senior government officials to prevent the bank`s closure, has been belatedly arrested, but whether much progress will be made in the investigation is unclear. It is pitiful to see prosecutors depending on his testimony though he denies the charges against him. Those who received money from him have probably figured out how to avoid prosecution. At a time when the central investigation unit of the Supreme Prosecutor`s Office is leading the probe after a long interval, failure to shed light on the lobbying scandal will significantly undermine public confidence in the prosecution.

The National Assembly threatened to dismantle the unit. Aware of the political pressure for the unit`s disbandment, the prosecutor general put prosecutors in charge of major cases, including a slush fund scandal involving the Hanwha Group, that the unit would normally take charge of. Several of the unit`s heads never took a case throughout their terms. If district prosecutors investigate cases that overwhelm their resources and experience, they are likely to fail in their probes, as they did with the Hanwha case.

The public security and special investigation units, which deal with cases involving politicians and high-level government officials, are the two most important arms of the prosecution. They have gone through tumultuous years, however, as the administrations changed. Fewer prosecutors pursue expertise in public security or special investigation, while more of them consider assignments to such units only a boost to their careers.

The old practice in which senior prosecutors with expertise and experience resign en masse when a new prosecutor general is appointed also weakens the prosecution`s ability to investigate. When Han Sang-dae was recently appointed as prosecutor general at age 52, all five senior prosecutors who received judicial training as young prosecutors together with him resigned. This was a huge blow to the prosecution`s investigative ability as senior prosecutors with more than 20 years of experience left.

The investigation environment is different from the past. Judges have grown more demanding in issuing arrest warrants requested by prosecutors. Prosecutors can no longer interrogate suspects overnight. The judiciary`s focus on trials rather than on prosecutors` bills of indictment has made trials more difficult for prosecutors. Suspects often withdraw their confessions to prosecutors during trials, as was seen in the case of former Prime Minister Han Myeong-sook`s bribery scandal.

Judges might need to follow the rule better one innocent person not suffer than nine guilty people go free. Prosecutors, however, must implement the creed that they should go to the end of the world to punish criminals. To make a long story short, prosecutors should speak only about their investigations. The same applies to the bribery scandal of the superintendent of the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, Kwak No-hyun.