The National Assembly's confirmation hearing for Kim Jong Bin, the country's top prosecutor, has come to a close. The country has recently seen a lot of high-level government officials have to step down because of allegations of irregularities, and so committee members spent relatively more time on examining his ethical qualifications. The result, however, was that there was not enough time to hear about the issues. Kim himself was deliberately ambiguous about some of his answers. Some of the substance was hard to come by and still a disappointment.
Such was his comments about the death penalty. "The people are feeling very insecure because of violent crimes, and because of that they are worried about capital punishment being abolished," he said. He essentially said that there are serious problems with the death penalty but it is still too early to do away with it. One should not take issue with his convictions. But it is not becoming of the Supreme Public Prosecutor General to use the rise in violent crime to oppose abolishing capital punishment. Is it not because of the poor state of public security that the people are feeling insecure?
His position on the National Security Law (NSL) is also not forward-looking. He recognized that it has been used to protect regimes instead of the state and subsequently had a history of use in human rights abuses. Still, he placed more emphasis on how "according to Article 3 of the Constitution it is difficult, legally, to see North Korea as a state." He holds a negative view of the idea of establishing a special office for investigating corruption among public officials, saying there could be problems such as controversy over such an agency's neutrality. One cannot of course guarantee that there would be no problems of that nature, but it is unfortunate that he is unable to see that the biggest reason there are calls for a separate agency is because the prosecution has not been doing its job adequately.
The prosecution surely must be agonizing over the issues, too. It has to think of victims of crimes who want stronger punishment. Abolishing the NSL would mean a downsizing of its public security department and having an agency devoted to investigating corruption among public officials would mean the prosecution itself could be the object of an investigation, and that has to be a discomforting thought. The nation's top prosecutor, however, must be the people's prosecutor. He should not put the interests of the prosecution first. The confirmation hearing ended after a single day, but it needs to be remembered that the people will always be watching.
The Hankyoreh, 30 March 2005.
[Translations by Seoul Selection (PMS)]
[Editorial] Expectations for the 'People's Prosecutor' |
