Right-leaning lawmakers on Tuesday slammed President Lee Jae Myung over his decision not to veto a bill to revise the Criminal Procedure Act.
The revision aims to remove all investigative powers from the prosecutors' office for the first time in more than seven decades, and to grant a South Korean court the greater authority to dismiss criminal trials.
Following Lee's approval of the bill at a Cabinet meeting Tuesday, Rep. Jang Dong-hyeok, chair of the People Power Party, said Lee did so "despite severe protests from violent crime victims" in order to have his own criminal trials dismissed. Lee is facing multiple criminal charges, but all of his court trials have been suspended since his inauguration in 2025.
According to Jang, Lee greenlit the prosecutorial reform, which he partially opposed, in exchange for the party's inclusion of the court's greater authority to dismiss trials in the middle of the legislative process.
The party's whip Rep. Jeong Jeom-sig said that investigative powers being taken away from the prosecution will bring the criminal justice system under the control of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea, citing the slow progress in police investigations into crimes of liberal lawmakers such as Reps. Kang Sun-woo and Kim Byung-kee.
"Even now, police are bowing down to those in power," Jeong said.
He added that Lee approved the revision bill "at the cost of people's security" because he only cared about his safety after the end of his presidential term. "Lee will in the end pay the price," Jeong said.
People Power Party senior spokesperson Rep. Park Choong-kwon said in a statement that provisions in the bill touted by the Democratic Party as designed to protect victims of crime "lack value."
Later on Tuesday afternoon, independent lawmaker Rep. Han Dong-hoon, who formerly chaired the People Power Party and served as the justice minister during the Yoon Suk Yeol administration, said the Cabinet's approval of the revision "opened the gates of hell for all South Korean people" because the changes will end up incurring higher legal service costs for victims seeking criminal justice.
Han, who was a prosecutor before he entered politics in 2024, also said Democratic Party lawmakers' claims that they had fallen victim to the prosecution's power abuse "do not change the fact that they committed serious law violations," given that the courts had found them guilty in many cases.
Han's remarks came as he convened a parliamentary forum attended by a survivor of a high-profile assault case in 2022, known by her pseudonym Kim Jin-joo. Kim said that the truth about her case was only fully revealed when the prosecution intervened after finding the police investigation insufficient.
"I was a lucky victim," she said during the forum, describing the legislation as "state violence" that would leave victims of crimes including murder and theft in the blind spot of protection.
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