단상斷想

If an institution that speaks of justice in a country without justice cannot stop the practice of limiting its standards to its own ledgers, then those standards are not law but status. The record of Chief Justice Cho Hee-dae's official discretionary expenses is a crime precisely at that point. For frontline public officials, a meal exceeding the standard by a thousand won was a disciplinary offense, and the excuse that there was no solicitation did not prevent dismissal. It is also the same crime for the government and ruling party to merely pretend to chase a chicken when the head of the judiciary tries to explain away a ledger with inflated numbers with a single line of apology. Since these two scenes coexist within the same nation, a national crime is established, even including rebellion and the endorsement of rebellion.

After the NewsTapa report on September 28, 2026, the National Court Administration admitted that the number of attendees was incorrectly recorded. Noh Kyung-pil, head of the National Court Administration, stated in the National Assembly, “I apologize for the part where the number of attendees was recorded differently from the facts,” and attributed the cause to “a working-level official arbitrarily recording it.” According to the report, there were at least 13 such entries in the first half of 2026 alone. Meals costing up to 200,000 won per person were made to appear as if they cost less than 50,000 won per person by inflating the number of attendees, and then these records were submitted to the National Assembly for parliamentary inspection. A restaurant in Bangbae-dong is even clearer. The records state that on November 25, 2025, 38 people spent 1,152,000 won, but the maximum capacity of the largest room in that restaurant is 19 people. Non-existent people were seated on paper to lower the per-person cost. The scale is also out of sync. The Chief Justice's official discretionary expenses jumped nearly thirtyfold from approximately 4.59 million won in 2023 to approximately 136.52 million won in 2024, the year after Cho Hee-dae took office. Cho Hee-dae took office on December 8, 2023. What is more significant than the amount spent is the ledger after the spending. The core issue is not the fact of having expensive meals with public funds, but the act of altering public records and submitting them to the National Assembly to hide the unit cost.

The front lines of this country did not handle the unit cost this way. In December 2016, twelve firefighters from a fire station in Incheon had dinner at a barbecue restaurant. An employee who had recently gotten married hosted the dinner as a thank-you and year-end party, and the total bill was 541,000 won. The groom's side paid 200,000 won, and four off-duty employees covered the rest. The problem was the seven section chiefs and team leaders who did not pay for their meals. The Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission (ACRC) determined that the cost per person, approximately 45,000 won, exceeded the 30,000 won limit for meals. The disciplinary committee then recalculated, subtracting the 200,000 won thank-you portion, bringing the cost per person to 31,000 won. This meant they exceeded the limit by 1,000 won. The seven individuals received a reprimand, and a disciplinary surcharge ranging from 31,000 won to 54,000 won was imposed. There was no solicitation, no permits or licenses involved, and no personal embezzlement. It was a thank-you dinner for a colleague's wedding, and the excess amount was 1,000 won. Nevertheless, it resulted in a disciplinary record. Phrases like 'it was customary,' 'it was a private gathering,' and 'it wasn't money I personally pocketed' could not erase that 1,000 won.

A more stringent line has already been drawn. An official from Ganghwa-gun, Incheon, who was in charge of building permit applications in 2017 and 2018, received meals and alcohol worth approximately 8.5 million won on seventeen occasions from individuals related to his duties. In a criminal trial in September 2023, he was sentenced to one year in prison, suspended for two years, a fine of 18 million won, and forfeiture. In August 2024, the personnel committee resolved to dismiss him and impose a disciplinary surcharge five times the amount received. He filed an administrative lawsuit, claiming he had never received or granted any solicitations and that these were meals with people he knew. On June 29, 2025, the 1st and 2nd Administrative Divisions of the Incheon District Court upheld the dismissal as lawful. The reason given was that even without clear malicious intent, it was a serious matter that severely undermined the integrity of a public official, and dismissal was a public interest measure to establish public discipline. Only the disciplinary surcharge portion was canceled due to an abuse of discretion. His argument that there was no solicitation did not prevent his dismissal. The standard confirmed by the court is simple: repeated meals related to one's duties can, in themselves, lead to the loss of one's position.

The same standard first led to the dismissal of an official at an overseas mission. In October 2018, a South Korean ambassador to Vietnam brought his family to a local golf course opening ceremony and received airfare and accommodation from a local company. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs audit deemed this a violation of the Improper Solicitation and Graft Act and filed a complaint along with his dismissal in 2019. He argued that all his activities were work-related and that he had not personally embezzled any money. His defense did not save his position. In August 2022, the prosecution summarily indicted him with a fine of 5 million won. Dismissal is a severe disciplinary action that also impacts one's pension. Even if the quid pro quo for the solicitation is not specified, if benefits exceeding the value are confirmed, the position is immediately lost. This case is sufficient to demonstrate the legal interpretation applied by the state to heads of missions. That legal interpretation, however, shrinks to a single apology in front of the head of the judiciary.

In the ledger of the head of the judiciary, who applied those standards, thirty-eight people who cannot enter the room are only listed on paper. A meal costing 200,000 won per person was disguised as less than 50,000 won and submitted to the National Assembly. When caught, the excuse given was the exact same sentence that was not accepted for seven firefighters and a Ganghwa-gun public official: "The working-level staff arbitrarily wrote it down. They incorrectly recorded the figures. We apologize." This was a budget under the name of the head of the institution, for meals accompanying the head of the institution, and the result is a parliamentary audit document. Without confirmation of whether the end-user was aware, who instructed the unit price to be adjusted to around 50,000 won, or why thirteen cases were repeated in the same manner, it is being closed as a clerical error by a low-level employee. For subordinates, a single meal exceeding the limit by 1,000 won resulted in a reprimand, and seventeen meals without solicitation led to dismissal. For superiors, repeated inflation of personnel numbers is about to end with a single line of apology. This is where fairness has collapsed.

Using the difference in charges as an indulgence cannot be allowed. The Improper Solicitation and Graft Act originally prevents receiving money and entertainment from those related to one's duties. The limits are 30,000 won for food, 50,000 won for gifts, and 100,000 won for congratulatory/condolence money. If the amount exceeds 1 million won per instance or 3 million won annually, it is subject to imprisonment of up to 3 years or a fine of up to 30 million won, regardless of job relevance. Money paid by public institutions to their officials can be an exception. Therefore, not all meals from the Chief Justice's business promotion expenses immediately fall under the same charge as receiving under the Kim Young-ran Act. However, this difference does not lighten the responsibility. The reason why the tactic of inflating the number of attendees at the front line became an issue was precisely to make the per-person cost appear below the standard. Meal expenses are judged by dividing the total amount by the number of attendees if there is no separate proof. If you increase the number of attendees, it falls within the limit; if you decrease it, it goes beyond the limit. What the Supreme Court data did was manipulate that calculation in reverse. Furthermore, there is a more serious layer here. It's not money that went into a pocket, but money that came out of a tax account, and the details were altered and submitted to the National Assembly. An issue where the creation of false official documents could be investigated cannot be taken lightly just because the receiving limits and provisions are different. Even if the charges are different, what was attempted to be hidden is the same: the per-meal cost exceeding the standard.

Equity is not an emotion. It is the same state holding the same kind of deviation to the same degree of accountability. The court did not accept the excuse 'it was the working-level staff who wrote it' from public officials who were dismissed and reprimanded. It considered the circumstances, the value, and the repetition, and declared the final disciplinary action legitimate even without a request, solely based on the violation of the integrity duty. However, if that statement is only explained in the ledger of the head of the judiciary, then the previously confirmed disciplinary actions become selectively enforced retroactively. In front of a firefighter who was reprimanded for a thousand won, and a public official whose dismissal was deemed justified even without a request, if a record of inflating a 200,000 won meal with documents ends with an apology, then those rulings become rules that only apply to subordinates. If, within the same state, subordinates calculate their seats to avoid exceeding 30,000 won, and superiors inflate a 200,000 won meal to make it appear under 50,000 won and then end with an apology, then the law carries different weight depending on rank, not action.

Justice is not about showing special mercy to special people. It is about the same standards applying regardless of status. The moment standards stop working, what remains is not law but hierarchy. The attitude towards disclosure also shows the same crack. Courts have broadly recognized the right to know about the business promotion expenses and special activity expenses of other agencies. They included when, where, and how much was spent in the scope of disclosure, excluding personal information such as attendees' names. They ruled that others should open their ledgers, but their own ledgers only disclosed total amounts and meeting names, and then it was revealed that the number of people was inflated. The admission that the concealed ledger was false turned that contradiction into misconduct. It is a structure where the institution that speaks of standards exempts itself from the application of those standards.

This is also why an apology cannot resolve the issue. The core of the wrongdoing is not the meal cost, but the manipulation of records and their submission to external parties. To attribute responsibility to the working-level staff, an investigation must determine who, under what instructions or practices, altered how many records at what unit price. This verification has never been omitted for frontline public officials. Even a firefighter's 1,000 won or a Ganghwa-gun official's seventeen instances did not close with their own protests but went through disciplinary action and trials. If this process is omitted only for the head of the judiciary, that omission itself is a destruction of fairness. Government audits and investigations must come first. The fabrication of official documents, the appropriateness of budget use, and the instructions and awareness within the reporting system must be uncovered. The results of that will determine criminal liability; an apology cannot replace that decision.

Impeachment is the subsequent political responsibility. The Constitution demands more from the head of the judiciary than just independence of judgment. It demands the trust that the standards applied to that position also apply to themselves. The political context in which the ruling party's conflict over the nomination of Supreme Court justices is used as leverage in this matter is clear. However, that context cannot erase the 38 people in a 19-person room and the 13 instances of price matching. Even if there had been no dispute over the nomination, the falsification of ledgers would remain. To move past this with an apology without uncovering the truth is a betrayal of public officials who received a reprimand for 1,000 won and were dismissed for a meal without solicitation, and a betrayal of the standards the court itself has established. Justice is only justice when the same standards are applied. If those standards stop at Cho Hee-dae's ledger, then the person who stopped them is subject to judicial processing and has no reason to retain their position. We are suffering this hardship as the country becomes one where rebellion is easy. Long live Cho Hee-dae, long live Yoon Seok-yeol, long live the whores!