Jury Trial Intervention

[Anchor Lead]

KBS has found documents demonstrating that the Park Geun-hye administration had influenced the Ministry of Justice to disable jury trials. The documents said that jurors' verdicts are influenced by their emotions and they are likely to be exploited by rebellious forces. However, the government's move was sparked by a series of not guilty verdicts for political dissidents.

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At the end of 2013, the court ruled that political pundit Kim O-joon and reporter Joo Jin-woo were innocent of spreading false information about the murder of President Park Geun-hye's nephew. The court had accepted the jury's not guilty verdict. Another jury found poet Ahn Do-hyun not guilty of posting comments on social media about then-President Park Geun-hye's involvement in the theft of freedom fighter Ahn Jung-geun's autograph. Afterwards, references about these cases appear in a policy review report from her presidential office. The report points out that the jury trial system is flawed. Referring to the Kim O-joon case, the report stressed that jurors were very likely to make emotion-based verdicts and to be exploited by politicians and other rebellious forces, and that the system needed to be improved. Back then, the Ministry of Justice had strengthened prosecutor's authority in the application and denial of jury trials and presented a revision that essentially excluded cases associated with the election law. But the Ministry's efforts were fizzling out amid furious protests from civic groups. Cheong Wa Dae suggested in the report that the Ministry of Justice should discover and disclose more problematic jury trials and proceed with the legislative process with cooperation from the ruling party.

[Soundbite] Prof. Jung Han-joong(Hankuk Univ. of Foreign Studies Law School) : "It's an attempt to essentially disable the jury trial system, which was adopted to heighten the judicial system's democratic validity and secure public trust."

However, the Justice Ministry's revision bill, which was overseen by the Park administration, was not approved by the National Assembly because of the internal opposition from the judiciary branch and the parliament's concern that the jury trial system could be undermined.