Presidential privilege for the first lady

Both the presidential office and the prosecution have finished their first homework, but the real test awaits.

First lady Kim Keon Hee was questioned by the prosecution for nearly 12 hours over the allegations over her involvement in a stock manipulation case and her acceptance of a luxury handbag from a suspicious pastor. The prosecution said the first in-person questioning took place in an undisclosed government building over the weekend. The people are upset about the strange development.

The questioning took place seven months after accusing her of accepting a Dior handbag. The allegation of her involvement in the stock manipulation of Deutsche Motors, a BMW car dealer in Korea, goes back to 2009 and 2012. The allegations around the first lady have built up over the period to cause unnecessary conflict and controversies.

President Yoon Suk Yeol had suffered dismal approval ratings throughout his term, and the governing People Power Party (PPP) lost big in the last parliamentary election in April. The difference over the issue caused deep fissures between the president and his once-protégé who headed the party until the last election. The ongoing campaign to elect the party’s new leadership has been tainted with conflicts over the first lady.

Most agreed that Kim should publicly visit the prosecution to explain herself. Prosecutor General Lee One-seok stressed that no one can be an exception before the law. Yet the investigation took place in an undisclosed place. The prosecution could have worried about security risks for the first lady. What should be more important than the location is whether the investigation had been done properly. Still, the discrete questioning raises the issue of fairness.

The investigation team also questioned the first lady outside the prosecution premise — without reporting it to the prosecutor general from the start. Few can understand how the first-ever investigation on a sitting president’s wife could have been conducted without the knowledge of the prosecutor general.

Justice Minister Park Sung-jae refused to grant the prosecutor general the authority to command the investigation despite his repeated requests. The minister also replaced the investigators looking into the first lady’s cases when he reshuffled the prosecution earlier this year. There had been talks that the president was not happy with the prosecutor general for expressing strong will to investigate his wife. Many people think that the presidential office willfully excluded him from investigating the first lady from the beginning.

We will find out if the rumors are true from the outcome of the investigation. Prosecutors must be able to clearly explain the affair if they do not want to provoke the suspicion of favoritism towards the first lady. Both the presidential office and the prosecution have finished their first homework, but the real test awaits.