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The Moon administration has finally gotten Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-youl to resign:

 Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-youl resigned Thursday, after strongly objecting to the ruling party’s push to create a new state agency to fully take over investigative powers from the prosecution service.

“I am offering to resign as of today,” Yoon said at a brief press conference held in front of the Supreme Prosecutors Office in Seoul.

“The spirits of the Constitution and the system of rule of law are crumbling. And it will cause damage to people. It is hard to watch common sense and justice collapsing,” he said, adding that he has done everything he could do in his capacity as prosecutor general.

President Moon Jae-in swiftly accepted his resignation offer, Cheong Wa Dae said, shortly after the prosecution chief made the announcement.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but the Moon administration has been trying to take out Yoon because he had the nerve to investigate corruption within the administration. That is what makes this new investigation agency they want to establish so controversial because an administration with a numerous corruption issues wants to form their own agency to investigate corruption and other crimes. The concern is that ruling party will use it to protect themselves and go after their political enemies. If this new agency was in operation when the Cho Kuk scandal hit does anyone think this Blue House appointed agency would have done much to investigate and indict him and his family for corruption?

As I have said before South Korea has long been a rule by law country and not a rule of law country. This agency may make it worse.

As expected the Moon administration has suspended the Prosecutor General and are using the Justice Minister as the scapegoat:

 President Moon Jae-in has approved the justice ministry’s decision to suspend South Korea’s top prosecutor from duty for two months, Cheong Wa Dae said Wednesday.

The measure against Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-youl over multiple charges of ethical and legal misdeeds came after the ministry’s disciplinary committee voted to punish him in a marathon session that ended early Wednesday morning.

President Moon approved the decision at 6:30 p.m. after Choo visited his office in the afternoon for a related briefing to the president, according to Chung Man-ho, senior presidential secretary for public communication. The measure immediately went into effect.

Chung, meanwhile, added that Choo has tendered a resignation.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but Choo is just carrying out the Blue House’s orders to get rid of Yoon because he would not cover up corruption occurring in the Moon administration.

Her resignation offer is what her political party was advocating for as cover for Yoon’s suspension. This is all political theater to get Yoon out of the way of the prosecutor reforms the Moon administration is trying to implement as well as stop any further investigation into corruption in the Moon administration. It also side lines Yoon who has been growing in popularity as a presidential candidate due to his stance against corruption in the Moon administration.

Could you imagine what the international media reaction would be if President Trump suspended Robert Mueller during his special counsel investigation into the Trump administration? This is basically what is happening here and I expect it will get little if any international media attention.

Anyone following the corruption allegations against Cho Kuk and his family should find none of this news surprising:

A former presidential secretary in charge of anticorruption has made a series of statements that Cho Kuk, a former justice minister and senior secretary for civil affairs in President Moon Jae-in’s administration, abused his power to shut down a probe into one of the president’s political allies.  
   
Park Hyoung-chul offered the testimony Friday during a Seoul Central District Court trial in which he and two others — Cho and Baek Won-woo, former presidential secretary for civil affairs — are all charged with abuse of power.  
   
Testifying during the seventh session of their trial, Park said that Cho had ordered him to shut down the Blue House’s audit into corruption allegations against Yoo Jae-soo, a former public servant and a political ally of Moon.    
   
Park said the December 2017 audit indicated that Yoo, who was serving as the financial policy director of the Financial Services Commission, had received bribes. Park said his office wanted to continue the investigation or send the case to the investigative authorities, such as the Board of Audit and Inspection, but Cho decided to shut it down. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but at this point with Moon’s ally Choo Mi-ae installed as the Justice Minister, Cho Kuk is now pretty much protected from being prosecuted for any crimes.

What is incredible is that Im is claiming this is a political prosecution against him by Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-youl when Yoon was hand selected by President Moon just back in July for the position. So how bad must the corruption be when Yoon is moving forward with this prosecution after being hand selected by President Moon and then having his deputy prosecutors replaced by the Moon administration in an effort to cover this up?:

Im Jong-seok, President Moon Jae-in’s former chief of staff, voluntarily faced the press on his way to be questioned as a criminal suspect Thursday and attacked Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-youl for conducting a politically motivated investigation of him. 

Im, who served as Moon’s chief of staff from May 2017 till January 2019, arrived at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office in southern Seoul around 10 a.m. and addressed the press before entering the building. Im was questioned by prosecutors about an allegation that top Blue House officials abused their power to influence the Ulsan mayoral election in 2018. 

The presidential office is accused of masterminding a police probe against then-Ulsan Mayor Kim Gi-hyeon of the opposition Liberty Korea Party (LKP) in order to help Moon’s friend, Song Cheol-ho, win the race. Song and 12 others were indicted on Wednesday on charges of election law violations. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but Im must be livid because he was supposed to be getting away with all this with the people President Moon hand selected in the prosecution. Before anyone starts shedding any tears for poor Im remember he is the one that led a group that tried to bomb the U.S. embassy in Seoul and once served as the bagman for the Kim regime in North Korea.

This is just another example of how South Korea is a rule by law country instead of a rule of law country:

Justice Minister Choo Mi-ae expressed intent on Thursday to order an internal probe into prosecutors that brought charges against a presidential secretary for suspected misconduct, calling it a rash move that did not follow due process.

Choo delivered her message to the press after an anti-corruption team at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors Office earlier in the day indicted Choi Kang-wook, a presidential secretary for public office discipline, for fabricating an internship certificate for former Justice Minister Cho Kuk’s son. 

The prosecution team reportedly bypassed its boss, Lee Seong-yun, head of the Seoul prosecution office, as he refused to sign off on the indictment, and went ahead with filing the charges with the approval of Prosecutor-General Yoon Seok-youl.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

This should be a surprise to no one that with the appointment of the new Choo Mi-ae as the ROK Justice Minister that stopping further investigation into the current government would be her first priority:

The Ministry of Justice abruptly reassigned prosecutors who have been investigating abuse of power and corruption allegations against key members of the Moon Jae-in administration and effectively demoted Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-youl’s closest aides. 

The ministry announced Wednesday evening that 32 senior members of the prosecution will be moved to new posts as of Monday. According to the ministry, 10 prosecutors were promoted to serve as heads of five high prosecutors’ offices and five district prosecutors’ offices, and the remaining 22 were reassigned to other jobs.

While prosecutors who have been working on high-profile cases involving Moon’s associates were moved to less important posts outside Seoul, prosecutors who had maintained amicable ties with the current administration or the administration of Roh Moo-hyun, the political mentor of Moon, were moved into powerful posts. 

According to the ministry, Han Dong-hoon, head of the anticorruption and organized crimes department of the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office, was named as deputy head of the Busan High Prosecutors’ Office. Han was the lead prosecutor in the investigations into academic and financial transgressions allegedly committed by former Justice Minister Cho Kuk and his family. 

Park Chan-ho, head of the public security department of the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office, was named head of the Jeju District Prosecutors’ Office. Park has been investigating the allegations that the Blue House abused its power to influence the 2018 Ulsan mayoral election and help a Moon associate win. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

Here is what prosecutors had to say:

“This is an overt attempt to dismantle the investigations [against the administration],” a senior prosecutor said. 

After Moon formally appointed Choo as justice minister last week, a massive reshuffle was expected. The announcement was made abruptly Wednesday evening.  

Choo left her office at the government complex in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi, around 4 p.m. Wednesday and headed to the Blue House, presumably to brief Moon about her plan. 

Two hours after Choo left the Blue House, the ministry announced the reshuffle around 7:30 p.m. “I have never seen a reshuffle announced after sunset,” said a prosecution official. 

Legal sources said the reshuffle was a political amputation of Yoon’s authorities. They said prosecutors loyal to the administration were appointed to the vacancies left by Yoon’s allies.

You can read more at the link, but when you hear the Korean left talk about prosecutor reform, this is the reform they are talking about. The next step will be having the prosecutors closely aligned with the Korean left begin investigating their political rivals.

Here is the latest attempt by the Moon administration to reduce the power of prosecutors in South Korea:

 Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-yeol strongly criticized a recent move by the ruling party to create another state investigative agency to limit the power of the prosecution service.

“Taking investigative power away from the prosecution amounts to regression of democracy and destruction of the spirits of the Constitution,” the top prosecutor said in an interview with Kookmin Daily published Tuesday.

“I am willing to stake my position for the 100th time if I could stop it,” he said.

The ruling Democratic Party (DP) is seeking to establish yet another agency tasked with investigating six types of serious crimes, including abuse of power and corruption, under the Ministry of Justice, which will strip the prosecution service of investigative power into those crimes and leave it only with the power to prosecute.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but this issue really comes down to is who would control this new investigating agency? If it is controlled by the Blue House with the potential to be used to settle political scores then I can understand the concern of setting up this new agency.

An impeachment of Yoon Seok-youl would have been a gift to Korean conservatives who could have argued that the Moon administration was trying to get rid of the prosecutor who was investigating their corruption:

The ruling Democratic Party (DP) on Saturday urged restraint in the ongoing feud with the state prosecution service, although a few in its ranks are calling for the impeachment of Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-youl.   
   
Last Thursday, the Seoul Administrative Court reversed President Moon Jae-in’s two-month suspension of Yoon, leaving the DP divided about the next steps in the administration’s drive to tame the prosecution service.  
   
Some hardliners in the party, like Rep. Kim Doo-gwan, argued the DP should wield its large majority in the legislature to impeach Yoon — an action unprecedented in Korean political history that would inevitably generate a constitutional standoff.  
   
But cooler heads apparently prevailed, with DP Spokesman Huh Young on Saturday calling on members to “control” their emotions and refrain from positions that could further alienate the party from a public increasingly repelled by the administration’s war against Yoon.  
   
Impeachment proceedings against Yoon “could lead to a rejection by the Constitutional Court,” Huh wrote — in other words, they could fail spectacularly. He added the party should avoid action that might backfire and focus, instead, on building a stronger legal basis for prosecutorial reform.  
   
Yet the factor most instrumental in tempering the party’s antagonism towards the top prosecutor was a public statement from the president himself on Friday. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but the fact that the ruling party was considering impeaching Yoon could be an indication that they are worried that he will uncover more ruling party corruption.

Now the Korean left appears to be willing to throw Justice Minister Choo Mi-ae under the bus in order to get rid of Yoon Seok-youl:

With the Choo-Yoon conflicts becoming a political burden on the administration, Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun, during a meeting with the President, Monday, reportedly said Yoon’s voluntary resignation may be inevitable and also implied Choo’s resignation may also be needed.

The following day Moon had a short, unscheduled meeting with Choo at Cheong Wa Dae.

It was speculated that Moon talked about a “joint resignation” of Choo and Yoon. But the ministry said Choo only reported the current situation to the President and there were no talks about resigning.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but Choo is just carrying out the Blue House’s orders to get rid of Yoon because he would not cover up corruption occurring in the Moon administration. This is the thanks she gets from her own party, be a sacrificial lamb in order to pressure Yoon to resign.

The latest attempt to take out South Korea’s Prosecutor General by the Moon administration has failed for now, but you know they will continue to go after him with everything they got:

A Seoul court on Tuesday granted a preliminary injunction requested by Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-youl over his suspension, in the first legal decision in a monthslong feud between Justice Minister Choo Mi-ae and the top prosecutor.

The Seoul Administrative Court ruled that suspending Yoon from duty was tantamount to dismissing him, which damaged the prosecution’s core principles of neutrality and independence.

The injunction will remain in effect until 30 days after another court decision is made. Yoon has filed a separate lawsuit against his suspension, along with having sought a preliminary injunction. 

Soon after the court’s decision came out, Yoon arrived for work at the Supreme Prosecutors Office. 

“I will do my best to safeguard the spirits of the Constitution and rule of law,” he said before heading to his office for the first time in a week.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but Yoon has to put up with all these attacks simply because he would not cover up corruption occurring in the Moon administration.