Han Dong-soo, head of the Supreme Prosecutor’s Office’s Inspection Department, who had been in conflict with President Yoon Seok-yeol, resigned with about a year remaining in office.
According to the legal community on the 6th, Director Han recently expressed his resignation to the Ministry of Justice.
Director Han was appointed as the chief of the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office in October 2019, and was reappointed in October last year, and his tenure is until October 2023. Article 28-2 of the Public Prosecutor’s Office Act stipulates that the term of office of the inspector general is two years, but may be reappointed.
He served as a judge for 16 years and came from the ‘Our Law Research Society’, which is classified as a progressive group in the courts. Former Justice Minister Cho Kuk proposed appointing a director to the Supreme Prosecutor’s Office as the head of the Inspection Department just before he retired.
It was on April 2, 2020, that Director Han began to establish a full-fledged confrontation with President Yoon.
Director Han expressed his intention to start an investigation into the ‘Channel A case’ to President Yoon, who was then the Prosecutor General. President Yoon’s position was that it was necessary to examine transcripts of conversations between the suspects in order to verify the authenticity.
Then, on April 7 of the same year, Director Han sent a text message to President Yoon, who was on sick leave, saying, ‘I will start the inspection’, and then tried to conduct my own inspection. However, President Yoon ordered the suspension of the inspection the next day and assigned the case to the Supreme Prosecutor’s Office for Human Rights.
President Yoon and manager Han also had conflicts over the case of ‘myung-sook Han’s alleged perjury teacher’.
Director Han received a written complaint from the Ministry of Justice stating that prosecutors perjured witnesses in the case of former Prime Minister Han Myung-sook in April 2020. President Yoon ordered the case to be transferred to the Supreme Prosecutor’s Office for Human Rights, but a manager countered that he was conducting self-inspection.
At the time, there were criticisms from within the prosecution that this attitude was a reason for disciplinary action by refusing the prosecutor general’s instructions regarding the distribution of the case.
Director Han is said to have protested against President Yoon even over the level of disciplinary action against Jeong Jin-woong, a research fellow at the Justice Research and Training Institute, who was accused of self-inflicted assault when Minister of Justice Han Dong-hoon served as prosecutor. Researcher Jeong was handed over to trial on charges of assaulting a minister who was working at the Legal Research and Training Institute as a demotion to investigate the Channel A case at the time.
At that time, researcher Jung was the deputy chief prosecutor of the Gwangju District Prosecutors’ Office, and President Yoon requested the Ministry of Justice to suspend his duties, considering it was difficult to participate in the front-line investigation as a defendant. Director Han claimed that he had objected, but it was not accepted.
After former Justice Minister Choo Mi-ae demanded disciplinary action against President Yoon, Director Han immediately launched a forced investigation into the ‘doubts of judges’. At that time, controversy arose that there had been human rights violations during the search and seizure process.
Director Han also appeared as a witness in the disciplinary review committee of President Yoon, and was investigated as a witness by the High-ranking Public Officials Crime Investigation Agency (PRA) in relation to the ‘Han Myung-sook case’.
Director Han appeared at the parliamentary personnel hearing of Minister Han in May and attacked President Yoon again in connection with the Channel A case.
Director Han said, “(President Yoon) put his (President Yoon) leg on his desk and told me to leave my (inspection start) report in the left corner and go. He said, ‘Don’t show me,’ because the issue is whether the audio files are identical.”
[서울=뉴시스]