What is prosecution reform? They say it is to ensure that our prosecutors respect human rights in every stage of a criminal investigation and that they maintain independence from outside interference while their power is restricted to establishing justice. Regrettably, we witnessed over the past three years no evidence of the above being realized. Instead, signs are that politics creeps into the process of law enforcement and, worst of all, favoritism rules the posting of prosecutors. Adding a

  Last Sunday, many Christians in Korea held online worship services from their homes, as requested by the government. Sitting before their computers or holding smartphones, they listened to sermons by their pastors standing at the pulpit in the empty chapel and prayed individually for an early end to the pandemic. It was the second time this year that the churchgoers were forced to stay home since they had the first such experience in March when outbreaks surged in the nation. At that t

After numerous failures, policymakers of the Moon Jae-in government must by now know that they cannot control apartment prices with tough restrictive measures on property transactions. With their latest package, they just seem to be trying to impress the voters who could help them stay in power. Days of the Moon administration have passed really fast with the last half year spent in the fight against the invisible coronavirus. The rest of its five-year tenure is going to be a difficult time wor

Former Korea Exchange Chairman Hong In-kie devoted his life after public service to research on international energy issues. While teaching at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Seoul Campus, he joined the crusade to save the nuclear energy industry in this country as the new government chose to depart from the promising sector in the stretch of its leftist ideology. During the 2017 presidential election following the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye, liberal candida

South Koreans bid farewell to two prominent people last week amidst noises about the mixture of respect and scorn shown in accordance with the people’s ideological divide. Half a million citizens petitioned the Presidential Office opposing Seoul City Hall sponsoring Park Won-soon’s funeral at the expense of taxpayers’ money. The main opposition United Future Party joined accusers of the mayor in condemning abuse of women in bureaucracy and what they called leftist hypocrisy. T

Two-and-a-half months have passed since the last parliamentary election threw South Koreans into a big surprise at the stunning leftist victory. During this period, suspicions of a rigged election persisted in diverse corners, on YouTube screens, social media dialogues and beer tables. The nation is now bracing for possible resurgence of the pandemic after the number of daily infections grew again from single digits to several tens through May and June. So it is about time to focus national ef

North Korea’s demolition of the South-North Liaison Office building in the border town of Kaesong this week was outrageous, but it also showed Pyongyang’s limitations in its actions against Seoul in the rising tensions between both nations. The shapely four-story glass structure was built as a symbol of a new era of detente in the inter-Korean relations supposedly starting with the signing of an agreement of peaceful cooperation by President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim

In the persistent condemnation of Japan’s wartime sex slavery, we have told the descendants of former imperialists to be sorely ashamed of the part of history that they share with Koreans. The recent episode, involving Yoon Mi-hyang, a key activist in the protest movement, brought shame on ourselves. Public complaints stoked when the leader of the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery of Japan became a National Assembly lawmaker on the ruling

South Korea, 12th in the world in terms of GDP ranking, has a defense budget of 50.15 trillion won for 2020, equal to or $42 billion. The nation’s defense spending has grown steadily these years to a level comparable to major states in Europe -- 84 percent of Russia’s, 84 percent of Germany’s and 72 percent of France’s in 2018. If the average increase rate of 6 percent over the past five years continues, South Korea will surpass Japan in defense expenditure by 2026. Supp

North Korean defectors Thae Yong-ho and Ji Seong-ho have got off to an uneasy start as freshmen lawmakers of South Korea, facing opposition from their liberal counterparts for inaccurate presumptions on the health status of Kim Jong-un. They need to perform their new jobs in a productive way if they want to pay back any special favors they enjoy here because of their unique backgrounds at this time, when many other refugees from the North are complaining of general public indifference borderi

On the day after the April 15 election, a lawyer friend of mine living in California sent me an SNS message, quoting French philosopher Joseph de Maistre: “Every nation gets the government it deserves.” Upon the news of the government party’s stunning victory in the latest National Assembly election here, he was telling me that Korean voters were never more reproachable than Americans who had elected Donald Trump in 2016. For the past week, experts wrestled with the question

　Liberty, democracy, peace, independence, progress, unification, justice -- these are words that have traditionally graced the titles of South Korean political parties over the past decades. 　What is regrettable about the Korean political environment today is that the actual performances of the parties here have little to do with the ideals adopted for their titles. After successive restructuring of parties and regrouping of politicians in recent years, the titles of Korea’s political

History shows that even raging wars do not restrain politicians’ fervor for power. The nation is now at war against the new coronavirus. Guns are not being fired, but so many warriors in imperfect protective gear are fighting an invisible but ubiquitous enemy while casualty numbers are updated on a daily basis. Despite the atmosphere of public desperation and panic, politics goes on in full vigor ahead of parliamentary elections. During the Korean War, President Syngman Rhee carried out t

Last week, the Seoul Appellate Court handed down a sentence of 17 years’ imprisonment to Lee Myung-bak, who was president of the South Korea from Feb. 25, 2008, to Feb. 24, 2013. The judge added two more years to the 15-year term the Seoul Central District Court had given him in October 2018. There are some possibilities of a change in his future. The Supreme Court may deliver him a different final verdict – if he chooses to appeal. The Justice Ministry may suspend the execution of

It is a crime story with enough sinister plots that Bong Joon-ho or even Martin Scorsese might be interested in making it into a movie. After several months of investigation, the South Korean prosecution under Prosecutor-General Yoon Seok-yul indicted 13 people, including current and former senior secretaries of President Moon Jae-in, for abuse of power and violating the election law in relation to the Ulsan mayoral election in 2018. Justice Minister Choo Mi-ae involved herself in the affair