Bartering the budget for favorable rulings

The DP is also bent on flattering the judiciary.

The Democratic Party (DP) has pledged to push for an extraordinary bill aimed at neutralizing the statute of limitations on the manipulation of investigation results by law enforcement agencies. The move by the majority party apparently reflects the need to pressure the prosecution before the Seoul Central District Court delivers its first rulings on DP leader Lee Jae-myung’s alleged violation of the Public Official Election Act in the 2022 presidential election and his apparent subornation of perjury when he was Seongnam mayor. The two court rulings are scheduled to be delivered on Nov. 15 and 25, respectively.

The DP is also bent on flattering the judiciary. The party remarkably raised next year’s budget for the judiciary, the first of its kind since 2016. Thanks to the help from the majority party, the judiciary can spend 24.6 billion ($17.6 million) more than the government-proposed budget. The DP also passed another bill aimed to shorten the required 10 years of legal practice to five years when the judiciary branch recruits judges. But the same bill was voted down by the DP in the previous legislature.

Such calculated moves by the DP are clearly linked to the upcoming court rulings on the party leader who is currently undergoing four trials. The party’s attitude toward the court itself has changed noticeably. After a member of the DP insulted Kim Tae-kyu — the acting chair of the Korea Communications Commission and a former judge — during the legislative audit of the government last month, the DP leader gave a stern warning to the lawmaker. Rep. Kim Woo-young, the DP legislator, immediately resigned from his seat in the party. That’s not all. The majority party ended the audit of the Seoul High Court and the Supreme Court much earlier than scheduled.

But the DP shows a totally different attitude toward the prosecution. The majority party entirely cut the budget of 58.6 billion won for prosecutors’ special activities. Rep. Chung Chung-rae, the high-nosed chairman of the Legislation and Judiciary Committee, based the decision on “a lack of clarity on the use of the money” by prosecutors. That’s a sharp contrast with the DP’s previous position on the issue. During the Moon Jae-in administration, Rep. Park Beom-kye, justice minister at the time, underscored the need for the budget for special activities by prosecutors.

If the budget is really inappropriate, the DP should have fixed the problem when it was the governing party. The majority party’s refusal to endorse the budget is clearly related to the need to win the judiciary’s favor before the bench hands out its first rulings on its boss. The DP will surely change its position depending on the court rulings. We hope the judiciary will not be shaken by such a sly tactic of the majority party.