[Editorial] Full disclosure of lawmaker Lee's `so-called studies' is a must.

What a dangerous thought that is contained in lawmaker Lee's utterance!

His statements were not only stunning but also made us somewhat shudder. How could he possibly make such remarks as a lawyer who served as a prosecuting state attorney for some 30 years. Lee was the deputy prosecutor-general, the country's second highest ranking attorney. His statements, therefore, summarily explain how and why the general public came to distrust the nation's prosecutors.

Lee's remarks at the weekend's general meeting of the Millennium Democratic Party (MDP) legislators were in fact same as emphasizing the roles of politicized prosecutors. The political neutrality must have meant to Lee merely a decorative word in a code of laws. When he was a prosecutor, Lee confided, he thought of reforming the nation's politics by the use of prosecutors' powers, and he thus instructed his subordinates to study the possibilities. His unseemly statements did not stop there. Lee added: ``the politicians who needed to be purged out of the political scenes, must be brought so. If the MDP as the ruling party fails to demonstrate such a power, it can hardly win the people's confidence.''

Now, no one will think that the prosecutors have properly discharged their duties with confidence when they worked under the instructions of their superiors like Lee who believed that nothing was impossible by the use of prosecutors' powers. Even if we suppose that most prosecutors are not like Lee, there were clearly some prosecutors who followed him as he confided. This being the case, it is unreasonable to assume any change in them in the meantime if they have still remained in the office. Against this backdrop, we should understand a prosecutor's open letter, released via the prosecutors' internal communications network, to urge his colleagues to observe stern political neutrality.

Profoundly lamentable is the fact that he did not even hesitate to make imprudent comments on court's judgments on case of election disputes. An analysis of the court's decisions, he argued, showed that the verdicts were prejudicial against the ruling MDP while favoring the opposition Grand National Party. The lawmaker called for the ruling party's measures to counter the court's decision. We are at a loss how he can possibly take part in conduct of state affairs when he is blind about what is meant by democracies' separation of powers into the three branches of legislature, judiciary and administration. He must ask himself whether he is, indeed, one of the persons who, he asserted, should be purged out of our political scenes.

On matters to call the witnesses for the Dong Bang loan scandal, he was reportedly enraged as to say that the MDP must have foiled the parliamentary adoption of witnesses for its state audit even if it required the tactics of hooliganism. At this point, we must seriously question his integrity as well as suitability as a lawmaker who can claim a conduct of hooliganism at the parliament.

National Assembly member Lee must be held responsible for what he stated at the parliament. He must disclose full details about whom he instructed to study the `political reforms,' the results of such studies as well as any steps to put them into practice. The disclosure is imperative because it matters for the honor and dignity of the most of the decent prosecutors as well as for their future.