Han Dong-hoon publicly pushes back against fabricated indictment special counsel law, calling it a 'privilege law'
The fabricated indictment special counsel law (a special prosecutor act to investigate allegations that prosecutors tampered with evidence in bringing indictments) was passed in a plenary session of the National Assembly on the 6th. The ruling and opposition parties, along with lawmaker Han Dong-hoon, have taken differing positions on the bill, fueling an ongoing war of words.
On the 7th, independent lawmaker Han Dong-hoon criticized the 'fabricated indictment special counsel law,' passed the previous day in a National Assembly plenary session at the initiative of the Democratic Party of Korea, as a 'privilege law' designed to grant privileges to the powerful. In a post on his Facebook page that day, Han argued, "The special counsel law passed yesterday to cancel the charges against Lee Jae-myung is not a law to punish crime, but a 'privilege law' that grants the powerful the privilege of escaping ongoing trials." He wrote, "It is a law that grants the privilege to neutralize one's own trial outside the courtroom to only one person among the entire citizenry: President Lee Jae-myung." In a separate post, he claimed, "With the 'Lee Jae-myung Privilege Law,' Korea has for the first time in its history seen the birth of a 'one-man privileged class,'" calling it "unconstitutional."
The Democratic Party immediately fired back. Bong Geon-woo, deputy spokesperson for the Democratic Party of Korea, dismissed Han's claims as 'sophistry' at a written briefing on November 7, countering, "I doubt he has any standing to speak of privilege." Citing allegations that Han sought to hush up the investigation into his daughter's falsified credentials and claims that he evaded a party audit over the members' bulletin board incident, Bong retorted, "He himself enjoyed every privilege imaginable—shielding investigations and audits through abuse of power—and now he has the nerve to lecture others about privilege?"
The People Power Party continued its offensive as well. In a statement on November 7, Park Sung-hoon, the party's chief spokesperson, criticized the law as "an act mocking the rule of law in South Korea for the sake of eliminating one president's legal risk.".floor leader Jeong Jeom-sik pointed out on Facebook the same day that the case of the forced repatriation of North Korean defector fishermen—who were found guilty at both the first and second trials—was included in the scope of the investigation, saying, "Labeling a matter the courts have repeatedly found criminal an 'indictment fabrication' and attempting to overturn the verdict is an act that flatly denies the rulings of the first- and second-trial courts." The People Power Party was set to hold a street rally near Gyeongbokgung Station in Jongno-gu, Seoul, starting at 3 p.m. that day to denounce the railroading of the special counsel law.
In response, Son Myung-su, spokesperson for the Democratic Party of Korea, said in a statement, "The core of the bill is to uncover the truth about whether the prosecution and state institutions under the Yoon Suk-yeol administration actually exercised unlawful authority during investigations and indictments," urging, "Stop immediately misleading the public with political attacks while turning a blind eye to the essence of the special counsel's mandate: to establish the facts of abuse of power."
