Prosectors’ Verbal Abuse Remains a Thorny Issue

Recently, Prosecutor-General Song Kwang-soo said he would review investigation practices, following the series of deaths which included Chung Mong-hyun, the chairman of Hyudai Asan, Nam Sang-kook, the president of Daewoo Construction and Engineering, and Park Tae-young, the South Jeolla governor, who all committed suicide after probes by the prosecution.

Those surveyed for this report said there is no longer physical violence during the questioning by prosecutors. However, many showed their anger over the prosecutors’ verbal abuse.

A man in his mid-fifties who was investigated at the Seoul Central Prosecutor’s Office said, “The most modest dirty word I had to put up with from a thirties-ish prosecutor during the three-hour questioning was ‘son of a bitch’.” He continued, “What pained me the most was not the court’s guilty verdict, but the prosecutor’s kicking his desk, swearing and yelling.” The prosecutor said while he yelled at him he did not swear.

A person, who was investigated for his involvement in political slush funds, said on condition of being identified as B, “There was only one prosecutor who impressed me because he proceeded with the investigations with reasonable cases.” He said, “I don’t want to talk about the others.”

Prosecutors and investigators alike believe they should not resort to violence while they remain lenient about verbal abuse. One prosecutor investigator went so far as to say, “It won’t be a problem as long as I don’t hit and hurt them.” A prosecutor in Seoul said, “We cannot question them the way customer service agents do with customers.”

What’s more serious than verbal abuse is the exploitation of the defendants’ relatives’ vulnerability by the prosecutors to extract confessions.

“To sleep with a daughter, you will have to jail her mother,” one experienced prosecutor said, while admitting his exploitation of the weak link the accused have among their relatives and families.

The environment of the prosecutor’s office is another flash point. One of the places the accused do not want to go is a detention cell in the prosecutor’s building.

Unlike the detention center, where they can read and work out, at the detention cell, they are tied up and have to wait to be called for questioning. This is why the accused regard it as more terrible than slammers.

A lawyer who wanted to be identified by his last name Kim said, “If the accused do not say what the prosecutor wants to hear, they will be put in the cell all day and become exhausted after being asked some conventional questions. “

The interrogation room in the prosecutors’ office is a problem as well. This is especially true of the special investigation unit at the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Seoul district office. This is where Hyundai Asan Chairman Chung and Daewoo President Nam were investigated. The Seoul district office is where a question session led a defendant to death in 2002. They all have heavy steel doors.

“When the steel door closed,” said a businessman who was investigated by the special unit, “I began to wonder if I would get out of this room. I felt I became psychologically shrunken.”