South Korea parliament passes bill stripping prosecutors of investigative powers

By Kyu-seok Shim

SEOUL, March 20 (Reuters) - ‌South Korea's parliament ​passed ​a sweeping legal reform bill on Friday that will strip prosecutors of investigative powers, a move that the government argues will curb the ‌risk of political abuse of one of the country's most powerful state ⁠bodies.

The legislation will create a new agency that will exclusively handle indictments and prosecution and spin off ‌the investigative function to a ‌separate agency.

The landmark vote formalises the separation of powers that President Lee Jae Myung and his liberal Democratic Party say is needed to prevent political abuse ​of unchecked prosecutorial power.

The push by liberals to break up the prosecution service gained momentum after Yoon Suk Yeol, its former head, was accused by political rivals ⁠of using the institution to gain the presidency and persecute opponents.

The conservative Yoon's short-lived martial law declaration in ​December 2024 became, for many reform advocates, the final argument for dismantling the institution that made him.

The bill's passage caps a decades-long ​fight in South Korean politics to break up ‌the prosecution service. Reform calls mounted as prosecutors were accused of targeting political enemies while protecting insiders, with liberals arguing that such ⁠concentrated power invited abuse and weakened democratic accountability.

Park Eun-jung, a former prosecutor and lawmaker from the liberal Rebuilding Korea Party, said the point of the reform was to correct "a shameful history ⁠of prosecutors changing the standard of the law to suit their political advantage."

But critics, including the ​conservative opposition, who had sought to block the vote with a filibuster, say the overhaul risks weakening checks on investigators and turning reform into a tool of the incumbent government.

Choi Jin-a, a ‌law professor at Korea University, said the bill would strip away the means to guarantee the prosecution service’s political neutrality and ‌independence, "making prosecutors and police even more beholden to political power."

Supporters say ending the prosecution's monopoly ⁠is precisely the point.

"In democracy, no ‌function is controlled by ​one group, and power works for the people through dispersion and checks," said former Democratic Party lawmaker Choe Kang-wook.

(Reporting by Kyu-seok ShimEditing by ‌Ed Davies)

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