An assessment of a group of prosecutors’ attitude when they interrogated criminal suspects at their offices has been made public for the first time.
The evaluation of Seoul district-serving prosecutors, conducted by the Korean Bar Association, was mainly focused on whether they took a coercive stance during the interrogation process or whether they were lax in performing their basic duties as civil servants.
The KBA, composed of a group of lawyers, has publicized the list of the 10 best prosecutors, who were assessed as upholding democratic values in dealing with suspects. But it chose not to share the names of 10 poorly graded prosecutors.
Despite not revealing the dishonorable list, the prosecution shortly expressed its unease about it. The investigative agency’s irritation is thought to arise from the lawyer association’s disclosure of some of the irregular practices carried out by the prosecutors on the “blacklist.”
An example cited by the association involved a prosecutor bombarding a suspect with rough words as the suspect denied his charges. Another prosecutor was found to have examined a suspect while they were still handcuffed during the entire interrogation.
A prosecution spokesman downplayed the assessment standards, and expressed doubt over their credibility or objectivity. He claimed the association had not given the prosecutors a chance to defend their positon over the cited “irregular practices.”
A senior prosecutor was quoted by media as saying that “suspects’ attorneys — the counterpart of the prosecution during court trials — are not in an appropriate position to evaluate their counterpart’s performance.”
Certainly, this coercive manner can only be found among a small portion of investigators. The remaining prosecutors may be demoralized by the result.
However, the prosecution needs to consider citizens’ human rights. Petitions from citizens over investigators’ attitudes are still being filed.
Data showed that 17 suspects committed suicide while under investigation by prosecutors’ in 2015, and the number has exceeded 100 over the past 10 years.
In South Korea, the prosecution is said to have secured its vested rights for decades in terms of its exclusive authority for indictment and overall control of police investigations.
The late President Roh Moo-hyun had tried to set up an independent entity to probe irregularities in the prosecution, but failed due to a severe backlash from prosecutors.
In a similar vein, the National Police Agency has yet to be given the independent authority to investigate suspects outside the prosecution’s control — or corrupt prosecutors.
The sort of forcible attitudes that lead to human rights infringements is ascribable to the lack of an effective agency to counterbalance the prosecution, which could prevent prosecutors from abusing their monopoly on investigative power.
Apart from their manner of interrogation, the prosecution received the second-lowest out of five grades in the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission’s “integrity” evaluation of the nation’s public agencies last month.
We hope that rather than talking down the credibility of the lawyers’ assessment, the prosecutors’ office looks back on itself in a move to gain more credibility with citizens.
Simultaneously, the National Assembly is required to benchmark the cases of the U.S. and the U.K., whose police have independent investigation authorities. Korea’s criminal procedure law, which was set 55 years ago, needs full-fledged revisions.
