Editorials
Police cannot investigate allegations against themselves
Testimony and dueling raids have intensified questions over whether senior police officials influenced charging decisions and curbed a fuller investigation.
Prosecutors and police investigating allegations of misconduct related to the case of Jang Yun-gi, who is accused of killing a high school student in Gwangju, simultaneously carried out search and seizure operations at the National Office of Investigation on the morning of July 21. The photo shows the entrance to the agency’s headquarters in Seodaemun District, western Seoul, on the same day.
NEWS1
Police testimony has raised allegations that the National Office of Investigation directed how the case against Jang Yun-gi, the suspect in the Gwangju high school student murder, should be handled, contributing to the decision to charge him with murder rather than rape and murder.
The head of the criminal division at Gwangsan Police Station, who underwent a detention warrant hearing on July 21 on charges including abuse of authority, said there had been no direct order not to apply the more serious charge. However, he acknowledged that the National Office of Investigation instructed police not to combine the student’s murder with a separate case involving the sexual assault of a Vietnamese woman.
The officer reportedly requested a joint investigation three times through the regional police agency, but each request was rejected.
Accounts differ in detail, but they point to the National Office of Investigation as bearing the greatest responsibility for the allegedly curtailed probe. Jang was accused of raping and stalking the Vietnamese woman two days before killing the student. The connection between the two cases was crucial to determining his motive.
Why, then, were they kept separate? After a stalking murder in Namyangju in March, President Lee Jae Myung criticized the authorities’ inadequate response and police launched a broad internal inspection. Senior police officials may have feared renewed criticism if the Jang case became another major scandal. Authorities must establish who received which reports and on what grounds the requests for a combined investigation were denied.
The Gwangju District Prosecutors’ Office and a special police investigation team each obtained separate warrants and searched the National Office of Investigation on July 21. Prosecutors and police raiding the same agency independently on the same day illustrates how tangled the current investigative system has become.
Under these circumstances, the police special team should not be entrusted with determining the truth. The inquiry must examine the National Office of Investigation’s reporting and command structure, including responsibility at senior levels. A team created by that very organization cannot easily convince the public that it will investigate without restraint.
This case requires swift clarification of who should lead the investigation rather than competing inquiries by prosecutors and police. Authorities should consider assigning the case to prosecutors or creating a joint investigative headquarters under prosecutorial direction. It must thoroughly examine both the order to separate Jang’s cases and Gwangsan police’s decision to apply only a murder charge, and whether senior officials sought to limit scrutiny.
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
