Still pushing to strip prosecutors of power?

Jang Yun-gi, who has been indicted for the murder of a high school girl in Gwangju, admitted during his second trial hearing on Monday that he killed the victim with the intent to commit a sexual crime. The confession came more than two months after the incident.

Since his arrest on May 5, Jang had insisted that the killing was impulsive. He told police and the court that he had been contemplating suicide and had tried to take someone with him. His admission of murder with the intent to rape came only after prosecutors uncovered new details through supplementary investigations.

What emerged from that process was disturbing. The police’s initial investigation was riddled with flaws, while allegations surfaced of collusion between the investigative team and Jang’s father, a senior police officer. Suspicions of organized evidence destruction and concealment have further shaken public confidence in the fairness and objectivity of police investigations.

What has particularly outraged the public is the possibility that evidence collection, the substantiation of charges and the impartial application of the law were distorted rather than rigorously scrutinized during the investigation.

The greater concern lies in the ruling party’s effort to complete what critics call “complete deprivation of prosecutorial investigative authority,” a policy that would effectively grant the police a monopoly over criminal investigations. Until now, prosecutors have been able to conduct supplementary inquiries or seek warrants again when police investigations proved inadequate or new allegations emerged. If prosecutors lose that authority, an important mechanism for correcting and checking police investigations will disappear.

Those concerns are not confined to political opponents. Six civic organizations, including the Korea Sexual Violence Relief Center, have opposed the ruling party’s proposed amendment to the Criminal Procedure Act, which would abolish prosecutors’ supplementary investigative powers. The groups argue that such authority should remain in cases involving socially vulnerable victims, including women and people with disabilities.

Both the Korean Bar Association and Lawyers for a Democratic Society have also expressed support for preserving prosecutors’ supplementary investigative powers.

Despite the backlash triggered by the Jang case, the ruling party leadership and hard-liners continue to insist on abolishing prosecutors’ authority altogether. Former Democratic Party leader Jung Chung-rae declared during his campaign to reclaim the party chairmanship that he would “complete the full abolition” of supplementary investigations.

The criminal justice system exists to protect citizens’ lives, rights and freedoms. Eliminating institutional safeguards designed to prevent miscarriages of justice would amount to little more than judicial overreach by the ruling party.