Supreme Court Chief Justice Yang Sung-tae has made a public apology over the latest corruption scandal involving a senior judge.
Kim Soo-cheon, who works at the Incheon District Court, was arrested last week for allegedly taking bribes worth 170 million won ($155,600) from Jung Woon-ho, the former head of Nature Republic, a local cosmetics company.
The judge’s arrest was shocking as it called into question the integrity of other judges and the fairness of court rulings in general. It further fueled public distrust of the judiciary and the justice system as it came in the wake of a series of high-profile corruption scandals involving lawyers who previously worked as judges and prosecutors.
Apologizing to the public for betraying their confidence in the judiciary, Yang lamented that the misconduct of one judge has put the entire court system in jeopardy.
He stressed the importance of integrity to a judge by saying that “A judge without integrity cannot have a conscience, and a judge without a conscience cannot make a fair ruling.”
He also quoted Kim Byung-ro, the highly admired inaugural chief justice of the Supreme Court, as saying, “It is better to be starved to death than to commit injustice.”
Following his apology, heads of the nation’s 33 district courts held an emergency meeting to discuss measures to enhance the integrity of judges and root out corruption in the judiciary.
The senior judges shared the view that reinforcing corruption prevention activities would be more important than strengthening punishments for misbehaving judges.
In this regard, they have called for the expansion of the office of the inspector general for judicial ethics to ensure that prevention activities are carried out on a constant basis.
They also proposed the appointment of officers to oversee judges’ compliance with the judicial code of conduct and the soon-to-be-introduced anti-graft law.
Along with these preventive measures, the senior judges called for increased scrutiny of personal wealth in screening judges for renewal of their appointments.
They said judges who were found to have amassed personal wealth in an illicit way should be excluded from reappointment. In Korea, judges are reappointed every 10 years based on performance assessments.
For judges involved in corruption scandals, they proposed severe monetary penalties. For instance, they suggested a cut in pension benefits for judges who were submitted to a disciplinary measure harsher than a six month suspension.
For judges who accepted inappropriate gifts or entertainment or embezzled public funds, they proposed levying penalties five times the amounts involved.
The senior judges took pains to hammer out measures that would be effective in improving the integrity of judges. But it is questionable whether the measures they proposed would root out corruption among judges and restore public confidence in the judiciary.
The public is convinced that there are many judges other than Kim who are involved in corruption. They suspect that the Supreme Court still lacks the determination to wipe out these corrupt judges.
The public’s suspicion is not unfounded. The arrest in May of Choi Yoo-jeong, a judge-turned lawyer who worked as a defense attorney for Jung, strengthened the suspicions.
Choi was alleged to have illegally contacted a plural number of judges to advocate Jung, which suggested that there were corrupt judges who were willing to do favors for their former colleagues in return for money.
But neither the Supreme Court nor the prosecution bothered to investigate the allegations. The Supreme Court needs to go further to regain the public’s confidence and firmly establish the rule of law.
