Jung Chung-rae and Kim Eo-jun’s attempt to change the question

Im Jang-hyuk

The author is a lawyer and the head of the political news department at the JoongAng Ilbo. 

Until Thursday, dark clouds appeared to hang over Democratic Party (DP) leader Jung Chung-rae’s hopes of securing another term as party chief. The central question facing delegates at the party’s Aug. 17 national convention seemed straightforward: Who is the best partner to ensure the success of the Lee Jae Myung administration? Yet President Lee had already provided what many interpreted as a strong hint about his preferred answer.

Through remarks at his first-anniversary news conference on June 8, his refusal the following day to receive officials seeing him off before an overseas trip and a social media post on June 13, Lee appeared to signal that Jung was not that answer. The message seemed clear enough that Jung himself posted a poem lamenting that life involves being shaken and drenched by circumstance.

Faced with the perception that he was not the president’s favored choice, Jung and his strongest political ally, YouTuber Kim Eo-jun, have attempted to reframe the contest by changing the question itself.

The effort began on June 12, when Jung posted a brief message on Facebook calling for the complete abolition of prosecutors’ supplementary investigative authority. On Wednesday, Kim invited Rep. Park Eun-jung of the Rebuilding Korea Party and others onto his program and characterized the DP leadership race as a battle over supplementary investigative powers.

The logic is apparent. If the convention can be transformed from a contest over who can best support the Lee administration into a contest over who is most committed to abolishing supplementary investigative authority, Jung may still have a path to victory despite tensions with the president.

The feasibility of that strategy became clearer on June 19.

That morning, Jung declared that the complete separation of investigation and prosecution was an irreversible DP policy and part of the governing philosophy of the Lee administration. He argued that abolishing supplementary investigative authority altogether was therefore a natural next step.

Several hours later, however, President Lee struck a more cautious tone. While saying the National Assembly should make its own judgment, he added that supplementary investigations generally should not be conducted but warned against eliminating every exceptional circumstance in which they might be necessary. Doing so, he suggested, could create future problems.

Lee also emphasized that the legislature had been given authority over the matter and should therefore bear responsibility for its decisions. Even so, his comments effectively established the political dividing line that Jung wanted.

Attention now turns to Prime Minister Kim Min-seok, who is expected to announce a bid for the party leadership. The question is whether he will allow himself to be drawn into a binary debate over whether he supports or opposes the complete abolition of supplementary investigative authority. If he accepts those terms, the effort to redefine the contest will already have succeeded.

For party members whose anti-prosecution sentiment remains strong, insisting on complete abolition is politically easy. Explaining why limited exceptions may still be necessary is far more difficult.

If such binary politics once again dominates the DP convention, the issues voters raised during the June 3 local elections may be pushed aside. Those concerns include whether the administration can pursue accountability for the alleged insurrection without deepening national division, how it plans to address widening wealth inequality even amid a rising stock market and what policies it has to create jobs for younger generations while expanding the artificial intelligence and robotics sectors.

If candidates feel compelled to endorse complete abolition simply to remain politically viable, the eventual winner will have little choice but to advance the legislation. In that case, the public could ultimately bear the cost of weakening the nation’s investigative capacity.

Over the past year, the DP has continued pushing to reduce prosecutors’ investigative authority. Yet, neither the police nor the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials has demonstrated notable success in investigating high-level corruption or white-collar crime. At the same time, many special counsel investigations promoted by the party have continued to rely on prosecutors, and even investigations into alleged irregularities surrounding the June 3 local elections are being handled largely by prosecutors.

Recent cases have underscored the continuing need for prosecutors’ supplementary investigative authority and questions whether police alone could complete election-related investigations within the six-month statute of limitations if the authority is abolished.

President Lee has acknowledged the risk of abuse but argued that safeguards should be strengthened rather than eliminating the authority altogether. Jung, however, appears unwilling to engage with that position.

This strategy may help Jung avoid responsibility for the DP’s disappointing performance in the Seoul metropolitan area during the local elections, but it also risks reviving the intensely anti-prosecution politics that surrounded the 2019 Cho Kuk controversy.