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When ‘democratic oversight’ rings hollow

Published: 14 Aug. 2025, 00:03

Kim Seung-hyun

The author is an editorial writer at the JoongAng Ilbo.

The police bureau will be abolished after just three years. Created in 2022 under the Yoon Suk Yeol administration within the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, the body had little presence but drew controversy over alleged political control of the police. Its stated purpose at launch was to provide “democratic oversight” of the police. With the abolition of the presidential senior secretary for civil affairs, the government rushed to create the bureau by executive order, reviving memories of the National Police Headquarters once under the Ministry of the Interior and Safety. Many saw it as a response by a prosecutor-turned-president to a newly empowered police force after prosecutorial investigative powers were curtailed. Lacking legal or democratic legitimacy, Yoon nonetheless called it democratic oversight.

The bureau’s weaknesses soon became apparent. Its first chief faced allegations of acting as an informant during his days in the labor movement, allegedly receiving a police position in return. The arrangement created a reporting line from an overly loyal bureau chief to Interior Minister Lee Sang-min, a close high school acquaintance of the president. Direct political control was evident, yet it was defended as democratic oversight, making the claim appear deceptive.

A police officer holds a one-person rally in protest of the Ministry of the Interior and Safety’s plan to establish a police bureau to tighten its grip over police authority in front of the government complex in central Seoul on June 23, 2022. The police bureau created at that time will be abolished soon after the change in administration. [YONHAP]

In principle, democratic oversight — subjecting state power to checks by the public and their representatives — is a fundamental element of democracy. When implemented properly, it needs no defense. But as with the police bureau, the process and methods are often corrupted. Promises to place authority in the hands of the people are sometimes little more than artful deception or exaggeration.

Ironically, the stated reason for abolishing the bureau is also to “strengthen police neutrality and democratic oversight,” according to current Interior Minister Yoon Ho-jung. The government’s policy planning committee has proposed making the National Police Commission more effective as an alternative. The commission, which includes the chairperson, is composed of seven members from the legal profession, academia, the police, media and civic groups. How such a body is formed will determine whether democratic oversight is genuine or hollow.

Given this record, “democratic oversight” can feel like a kind of political scam. Successive governments, regardless of ideology, talk it up when in power, only for the pledge to end in empty words. The tactic recalls the phone scams run by fake “Prosecutor Kim Min-soo” or “team leader Kim Mi-young” — common Korean names widely recognized from numerous real-life voice phishing scams — who frighten or coax ordinary people into handing over money.

There are concerns that the Lee Jae Myung administration, which champions itself as a “government of popular sovereignty,” may be treating the concept as a political cure-all. Policy priorities announced on Wednesday included “strengthening democratic and institutional oversight of the people’s military” under the Ministry of National Defense and “ensuring police neutrality and strengthening democratic oversight” under the National Police Agency.

The Democratic Party’s (DP) prosecutorial reform bill is framed as eliminating the all-powerful prosecution and placing the criminal justice process “under public control.” While the rationale sounds compelling, warning lights are already flashing over the speed of the legislative push. The aim is to pass the bill before the Chuseok harvest holidays in early October this year, now less than two months away, but at a public hearing, it drew criticism for having “holes everywhere.” Overhauling a criminal justice system in place for more than 70 years without inconveniencing the public is no small task. Even nonexperts recognize the scale of the undertaking, yet the party’s members on the Legislation and Judiciary Committee appear unconcerned.

The committee’s chair, who presided over that hearing, was later photographed during a plenary session engaging in stock trades under borrowed names and is now under investigation. One wonders whether such a figure ever saw the prosecutorial reform bill as a serious priority. The episode evokes the same sense of disillusion as encountering a scammer posing as a prosecutor.

The Supreme Prosecutors’ Office in Seocho District, Seoul [YONHAP]

The vacant chairmanship has since been filled by DP Rep. Choo Mi-ae, a former judge who, five years ago during the Moon Jae-in administration’s prosecutorial reform drive, succeeded former Justice Minister Cho Kuk as the civilian appointee to head the Ministry of Justice. While she may seem a suitable choice, she previously refused a parliamentary committee’s request to file for an indictment in the presidential office’s alleged interference in the Ulsan mayoral election, prompting political backlash. That episode reflected a preference for factional loyalty over legislative oversight. Such an approach would be ill-suited for the current prosecutorial reform effort, which demands a balanced legal mind to establish a stable criminal justice framework under genuine democratic oversight.

If the parliament-controlling DP rushes reform at the expense of sincerity, it risks collapsing into political theater — and the promise of democratic oversight could end up resembling nothing more than another call from a fictitious “team leader Kim Mi-young.”

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom staff.