[Editorial] When Special Investigator Doesn't Find Anything

The special investigator's inquiry into suspicions regarding the Russian oilfield development project by the national railroad has ended without much to show for it. Over the course of three months close to 40 investigators looked into close to 200 people, but they failed to come up anything new that would prove the involvement of government insiders. All said and done, the special inquiry did not get any farther than the regular prosecution's initial investigation. There have been six special investigators named since 1999, and together with the investigation into presidential aides last year, it will be hard not to remember this inquiry as one of the most useless.

From the start it was expected that this would be the case. The prosecution and the Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) had competed their investigations, and with key figures having taken flight overseas, it was too much to expect anything new. The waste of government money is one thing; who will compensate the many people who had to be brought in and questioned for the trouble they had to go through?

The reason the special investigator's inquiry never got anywhere is because he was commissioned without prudence, the result of political offensives and partisan reasoning. There has to be an end to the old political practice of making allegations without sure evidence and then blow those allegations out of proportion while calling for a special investigator. When special investigators first began being commissioned they achieved much in the way of uncovering the truth about cases where it was thought there were limits to what the regular prosecution's investigations were accomplishing. The potential of a second investigation by a special investigator has played a positive role in making the regular prosecution be thorough with its investigations. That being the case we think it is still too early to talk about doing away with special investigators, as is being called for in some quarters.

However, it will be hard to expect much in the way of results from special investigators in the future if they are commissioned for set time periods each time that politics calls for them. Several times over the country has seen the politicians change their positions on special investigators according to what their political interest are at the time. We hope to see the National Assembly work on finding an effective way to give special investigations a more permanent format, such as by creating that "official corruption investigation office" or having a permanent program for special investigators.

The Hankyoreh, 16 November 2005.

[Translations by Seoul Selection]