A Judge’s Regret

We now stand on the eve of a presidential impeachment trial. The National Assembly votes to impeach, but it is judges who decide whether the impeachment is justified. I am deeply dissatisfied with the current system. In theory, as long as the president’s actions are not illegal, the judges must dismiss the National Assembly’s impeachment motion. Does that mean the president and other holders of power may do anything at all, so long as it is not illegal? This is a system that merely breeds legal technicians. The very president facing impeachment is himself a former prosecutor general who built his career using the law as a weapon — in some sense, Korea’s finest legal technician. How can a system so one-sidedly favorable to legal technicians properly perform its function of defending democracy? And who, in the first place, are these characters called the legal profession — that unelected power — to sit in judgment over others?

Given how extraordinarily many politicians in Korea come from the legal profession, it was never a secret to begin with.

A Judge’s Regret [Revised and Expanded Edition] By Moon Yu-seok | Munhakdongne | October 14, 2019

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