단상斷想

The Serious Crimes Investigation Agency has opened its doors, but it has no head. The direct reason why the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency, which was launched on October 2, 2026, started operating with a vacant director position is not due to legal deficiencies. It is the demand for withdrawal and resignation from hardliners in the pro-government camp that has continued for nearly a month since the nomination. The offensive from Gyeonggi Governor Choo Mi-ae, lawmakers Kim Yong-min and Yoon Kun-young, Supreme Council member Lee Seong-yoon, and Park Eun-jung and Kang Kyung-suk of the Cho Kuk Innovation Party, who are mentioned as being on the same front, is packaged as the last bastion of prosecutorial reform. However, what their offensive actually shook was not the prosecution, but the personnel authority of the Lee Jae-myung government and the coordination ability of the Kim Min-seok leadership. Outside, the opposition party, and inside, self-proclaimed purists, dug the same hole. The paradox of delaying the launch of a reform institution in the name of reform has now become a matter of responsibility, not an issue of investigation or pros and cons.

The points they take issue with can be condensed into three. First, Kim Ji-yong publicly opposed the abolition of supplementary investigative powers when he was the head of the Criminal Department of the Supreme Prosecutors' Office in 2022. At the time, he said that if supplementary investigations were blocked in complex cases like fraud, requests would be repeated due to lack of evidence, and the damage from delayed processing would fall on the public. Hardliners fixate on this statement as a record of opposing the complete separation of investigation and prosecution. The Ministry of Interior and Safety and the Blue House drew a line, saying it was not an opposition to the separation of investigation and prosecution itself, and the candidate himself stated after his nomination that he actively agreed with the principle of separation. If one does not distinguish between past practical judgments and current acceptance of the system, only the circular argument remains that anyone who has ever expressed a different opinion on reform cannot become the head of a reform institution. Translating words that expressed concern about the vacuum in supplementary investigations into a denial of the principle of separation itself is an interpretation, not a record. When that translation is used as a stigma before the confirmation hearing, the verification proceeds with a conclusion already in mind.

Second, he was named in a statement by prosecutors requesting reconsideration of the suspension of Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-yeol by then-Minister of Justice Choo Mi-ae in 2020. Choo Mi-ae used this to call him “Han Dong-hoon’s accomplice,” “Yoon Seok-yeol’s mercenary,” and even a “spy.” Representative Kim Yong-min said it was like appointing a pro-Japanese collaborator as the head of the Special Committee for the Investigation of Anti-National Activities, and that a target of reform should not be placed in a position of reform. The Blue House’s explanation is different. The purpose of the statement was not to deny the misconduct itself, but to point out procedural flaws, and the Inspection Committee and the court also pointed out issues of defense rights and procedures. There is a more awkward record. Kim Ji-yong was promoted to prosecutor general during Minister Choo Mi-ae’s tenure, issued an order to reinvestigate the case related to Yoon Seok-yeol’s mother-in-law, Choi Eun-soon, as the head of the Criminal Department of the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office, and virtually left the prosecution after being demoted to a provincial position in the first personnel reshuffle of the Yoon Seok-yeol government. President Lee Jae-myung’s remark, “Isn’t it difficult to conclude that he is pro-Yoon?” refers to this trajectory. The label of ‘pro-Yoon’ does not stick well in the face of demotion and reinvestigation orders. Nevertheless, the label persists. This is because the stigma is politically more useful than the facts. If a single line in a 2020 statement defines the entirety of a 2026 appointment, then all the appointments, incidents, and demotions accumulated in between are relegated to footnotes.

Third, if the head of the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency and the leadership of the Public Prosecution Office are filled with former prosecutors, investigations and prosecutions could be re-combined through personal networks, and the old Supreme Prosecutors' Office Central Investigation Department could be revived on a larger scale. The proposed organizational restructuring, which leaves existing investigative personnel in the Public Prosecution Office, is also an extension of the same concern. This is a valid institutional risk. The separation of investigation and prosecution should be maintained by the separation of institutions, not by the goodwill of individuals, and the caution that networks of former prosecutors can loosen this separation is fundamental to reform theory. However, if the only solution to this risk is the withdrawal of nominations and voluntary resignations, then why does a parliamentary hearing exist? Twenty-three people were nominated through public recommendation, and a civilian-led recommendation committee narrowed it down to three former prosecutors and one former judge, followed by a recommendation from the Minister of Interior and Safety. The President made the nomination during his trip to France, and when the backlash grew, he ordered additional verification. The verification results indicated no change from the original assessment. The statement that it was not enough to deny a hearing opportunity led to the same conclusion. It was also stated that determining who among the remaining three could be replaced is still a matter of judgment. Demanding only a conclusion while ignoring due process is not the rigor of reform, but rather a declaration that any appointment not approved by oneself is unqualified, regardless of the process.

Here, the question of "the second watermelon" arises. The original criticism of the watermelon was that its exterior and interior were different. It meant that while displaying the party's colors, it harbored different calculations internally. Now, the direction is reversed. While outwardly pledging to maintain the purity of reform, internally, it places its 2020 front and factional brand above government appointments. For Choo Mi-ae, Kim Ji-yong is not just a simple candidate. He is the former prosecutor general who asked her to reconsider his suspension from duty, and calling his name again is to reconfirm that judgment in 2026. Even after the Senior Secretary to the President for Political Affairs met and explained the background of the appointment, the intensity did not decrease. The expression "one who has not the slightest pang of conscience" is not the language of policy disagreement. For the Rebuilding Korea Party, this issue is a stage to prove its differentiation from the Democratic Party. The declaration that it will not hand over the interpretation rights of prosecutorial reform to the ruling party leadership and the Blue House becomes the raison d'être of the coalition party. For Kim Yong-min, Yoon Kun-young, and Lee Seong-yoon, it is an opportunity to confirm their leadership of the hardline faction within the party. Lee Seong-yoon, a supreme council member, said, "We must resolutely cut off the perception that political prosecutors are a new central investigation agency," which is a sentence that has already designated the individual candidate as the target to be cut off. Former representative Jeong Cheong-rae's statement, "It is necessary to carefully consider whether it is right for someone who opposed the separation of investigation and prosecution to come," was a cautious view. The hardliners' daily offensive pushed that cautious view into a demand for withdrawal. There is a distance between deliberation and stigmatization. The side that eliminated that distance took the internal initiative.

Differences of opinion are legitimate. They are also rooted in the discomfort with the symbolism of appointing a former prosecutor as the first head. However, the moment that difference turns into stigmatization and pressure to resign before a hearing, it becomes a veto, not a verification. The premise that their own judgment might be flawed is entirely missing. President Lee Jae-myung's statement, "Prosecutorial reform is for the people, not to create political legacies for specific individuals," directly points to this void. On the same day, he wrote that most proponents of prosecutorial reform, including the Cho Kuk Innovation Party, once advocated for having separate investigation and prosecution departments within the Ministry of Justice, and also for granting supplementary investigative powers to the public prosecution office. If today's purity is built upon yesterday's blueprint, then yesterday's claims and today's stigmatization clash from the same person's mouth. Kim Min-seok's statement on the party's official YouTube channel, "If there is a concern that excessive demands or claims could damage the reform camp, its ranks, its front line, and the President's leadership itself, then it is time for the party to control it," means that this offensive has already become subject to internal control. A representative's control statement is usually not directed at the opposition party. The fact that it is directed at his own party's voice is evidence that that voice has begun to encroach upon the government's agenda.

The nomination was around September 8, and additional verification and re-approval time intervened before the request for a personnel hearing reached the National Assembly. In the meantime, the Central Investigation Agency was launched on October 2 without a head. An agency that was supposed to handle corruption, economic, defense industry, drug, national protection, cyber crimes, and judicial distortion crimes opened its doors amidst a vacant commissioner position and a lack of office space and personnel. The opposition party uses this vacuum as evidence of lack of preparation and lax discipline. The scene where the Gwangju Central Investigation Agency chief publicly criticized the candidate was immediately brought up as an issue of organizational discipline during the parliamentary audit. As the hardliners' questioning of the issue overlapped with public opposition within the organization, the news of the first week of its launch became internal division rather than investigative capabilities. The supporters are once again divided between 'spy' and 'procedure'. One side reads the Blue House's explanation as an overwrite, while the other side reads the hardliners' offensive as an attempt to shake the government. This division was not created by the opposition party. It was created within the same camp, under the name of the same reform.

The place to assign responsibility is clear. It is how those who prioritized factional memories and personal justifications over the government's schedule will handle the resulting leadership vacuum and division among supporters. The conviction that an opinion is error-free becomes a delay mechanism for reform, not a driving force for it. Verification involves examining past statements, subsequent trajectories, orders for reinvestigation, demotions, and acceptance of the principle of separation during a hearing. The hearing scheduled for the 14th is the venue for that verification. Before that, demanding resignation by branding someone a 'mercenary' and 'spy' is closer to denying the Lee Jae-myung government's right to judgment, contrary to the claim of protecting that government. Hardline is not always right. If an opinion that declared itself to be of high purity stopped the government's clock, then the value of that purity must also be calculated. The person who should first explain the vacant position in the launched agency should also be the owner of that hardline stance. A structure that shifts the cost of division to supporters and remains in a position of principle is not the grammar of reform, but the grammar of vested interests. When that grammar is repeated within the party, what collapses is not the opposing camp, but the government that it claims to have built.