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.

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.^[229] They have been considered one of the most power­ful 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 power­ful politicians or high-ranking government officials, or for their politically

biased investigation of the cases.’^[230] One notable commentator has gone even further. According to his description of the Korean prosecutors in general, as far as one is concerned about the prosecutorial office, Korean society needs a revolutionary change rather than a simple reformation or remodeling. Here is his grotesque description of Korean prosecutors, albeit that it is argumentative and not scientific:

In the past, [Korean prosecutors] have abused their mighty public power to please power-holders.

I personally do not intend to defend the Korean prosecutorial office. Moreover, if Korean people do not trust the prosecutor’s office, I believe that they might have sufficient reasons to feel that way. However, critical views do not automatically guarantee a new set of measures to enhance the neutrality of the Korean prosecutors. Our primary interest is not in adding skeptical comments about the existing system, but to give a clear idea of who is a Korean prosecutor and of what he is supposed to do according to the Korean Constitution and the Korean Criminal Procedure Code (CPC).^[232] After a clear picture has been given, we can analyze why the prosecutorial work has been wrongfully distorted. Then, we may be able to find a solution for democratiz­ing the prosecutorial office. In that sense, any comments and recommenda­tions for creating a more democratic or neutral prosecutorial office should be based on the understanding of how the office presently works in Korea.

A second section will focus on the regulatory scheme of Korea with regard to the public prosecutor’s judicial powers. While carefully examining which powers are given to the prosecutors, we can possibly think about another interesting project - that is, to compare the Korean prosecutor with any functionaries familiar to the Western system. The Korean prosecutor is very similar to the English Justice of the Peace^[233] (JP), but there is a substan­tial difference between them. The Korean prosecutor is also basically doing the same things as the French procureur de la Republique (public prosecu­tor), but these two are not of the same class. Another interesting similarity is between the Korean prosecutor and the so-called examining magistrate.^[234] All these comparisons will be discussed in the third section. In the fourth part, I would like to return to the very real issue of why the Korean prosecutor has come to be the main target in the Korean judiciary reform project. I would also question whether or not it is really reasonable to attack the reliability of a document made by the Korean prosecutor. That issue will be fully discussed just prior to the final comment on ongoing judiciary reform in Korea.

II.