Special counsel team considers former president’s “conditional cooperation” as a de facto refusal for questioning
While the former President Yoon Suk Yeol agreed to comply with a special prosecution summons on condition of a closed-door appearance, the special counsel team rejected his proposal, reiterating that no one is above the rules.
The special counsel team — led by Cho Eun-suk to investigate Yoon’s alleged insurrection and treason — and the ousted president's attorneys engaged in a fierce dispute on Thursday morning when the latter requested a one-hour delay from the original schedule for the investigation, which was set to start at 9 a.m. Saturday.
The independent counsel reportedly agreed to the schedule change as it had no legal basis to enforce a 9 a.m. appearance
But the standoff continued as Yoon refused to publicly appear for the investigation.
“Now that the time and location of the summons have already been made public, it is difficult to understand what they (Yoon and his legal team) mean by requesting a closed-door summons. They requested the use of the underground parking lot,” Park Ji-young, assistant special prosecutor, told the reporters.
“As none of the former presidents — Chun Doo-hwan, Roh Tae-woo, Roh Moo-hyun, Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye — ever entered the prosecutors' office building via its underground parking lot, we told the legal representatives that we cannot accept the request,” she said.
The public summoning of suspects was banned as part of the liberal Moon administration's prosecution reforms in 2019, but this was reversed in a second round of reforms in early 2022.
Yoon’s legal representatives previously condemned the special prosecutor’s public summons as a measure that was made to publicly humiliate Yoon, calling it a “political maneuver,” instead of an investigation.
“According to the rules of Criminal Procedure for Prosecutors’ Offices, the date and location of the investigation need to be coordinated with the suspect or his legal representatives. But this procedure has been entirely disregarded. And the investigation schedule has been disclosed only through the media,” said Yoon’s legal team.
“We (legal representatives) are requesting Yoon’s investigation to be conducted privately based on the regulations on human rights protection intended to protect the suspect’s privacy and reputation,” it added.
But the special counsel team denied the attorneys’ argument. It said the special prosecutor could brief the media on the investigation, including the timeline for the investigation, according to the Special Prosecutor Act for the investigation of Yoon and his wife Kim Keon Hee.
With President Lee Jae Myung’s approval of three special counsel bills to investigate Yoon, Kim and the death of a Marine during Yoon’s term on June 10, an unprecedented trio of special counsel investigations was launched.
Though the investigations are expected to begin as early as July after a mandatory 20-day preparation period ends on June 30, the teams can question people before that in exceptional circumstances if risks such as destruction of evidence are identified.
The team is thought to be the biggest special counsel team in South Korean history, consisting of almost 270 officials, including 60 dispatched prosecutors.
Given that the investigation can be made for up to 170 days, it is considered to run through the end of this year.
sj_lee@heraldcorp.com
