Kim, Heekyoon --- "The Role of the Public Prosecutor in Korea: Is He Half-Judge?" [2010] ELECD 254; in Cho, Kuk (ed), "Litigation in Korea" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010)

Book Title: Litigation in Korea

Editor(s): Cho, Kuk

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848443396

Section: Chapter 4

Section Title: The Role of the Public Prosecutor in Korea: Is He Half-Judge?

Author(s): Kim, Heekyoon

Number of pages: 16

Extract:

4. The role of the public prosecutor in
Korea: is he half-judge?
Heekyoon Kim*

I. INTRODUCTION
The following comment, though not the result of an empirical survey, shows
what ordinary people think of legal professionals:

[N]eutrality had been associated primarily with judges and was thought to describe
a trait that distinguishes judges from lawyers. The emerging notion of prosecutorial
neutrality recalls the traditional conception of prosecutors as `quasi-judicial' offi-
cers. It emphasizes the distinction between prosecutors and lawyers for private
parties.1

To summarize roughly, the public does not care much about how lawyers act in
public or out of sight because they are believed to be no more than surrogates
for private parties. However, with regard to the behaviors of the quasi-judicial
officers or judicial officers, taxpayers expect a lot: they hope that a judge would
be neutral and that a prosecutor would be nearly as neutral as the judge.
Korean prosecutors have recently been the key target of the government-
oriented reform project.2 They have been considered one of the most power-
ful legal professions in Korea for more than a half century after the
emancipation from Japanese colonization. Reformers are complaining that the
Korean prosecutors did not seem to be sufficiently neutral. They `have been
criticized for their reluctance to investigate corruption cases involving power-
ful politicians or high-ranking government officials, or for their politically


* Parts of this chapter were originally published as The Role of the Public
Prosecutor in Korea: ...