Cheong Wa Dae: "Cho Kuk Himself Acknowledged It in the Past" ... Rebutting the Rebuilding Korea Party's Claim That Its Position Has Not Changed

[Financial News] After the Rebuilding Korea Party directly challenged the prosecution reform plan President Lee Jae Myung unveiled on X (formerly Twitter) on the 5th, saying the facts were different, Cheong Wa Dae immediately issued a counter-rebuttal, even bringing up former party leader Cho Kuk's past remarks.
That night, Cheong Wa Dae's Office of the Spokesperson issued a notice to the media and pointed out, "Cho Kuk, head of the Rebuilding Korea Party's Institute for Innovation Policy, appeared on the YouTube channel 'Jang Yun-seon's Reporting Convenience Store' on Aug. 29 last year (2025) and personally stated, subject to conditions, that he held 'the position that supplementary investigations should be recognized.'"
This was a counter-rebuttal to the RKP's earlier response: "We argued for the 'right to request supplementary investigations,' not the 'authority to conduct supplementary investigations,' and have never changed our position."
Regarding the question of which agency the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency should belong to, the spokesperson's office also pointed out, "Although we previously argued that it should come under the Ministry of Justice, we later changed our party position to place it under the Ministry of the Interior and Safety. The RKP has likewise repeatedly changed its position on details such as the authority to conduct supplementary investigations, which shows that the Lee Jae Myung government has been pursuing a result far more advanced than the prosecution reform initially discussed."
It continued, "The detailed design of prosecution reform has been adjusted in line with the discussion process and changing circumstances," and added, "Rather than fixating narrowly on minor differences in prosecution reform, we ask you to join us in the process of bringing the reform, which has already proceeded irreversibly, to a high level of completion." The statement repeatedly emphasized that the point of President Lee's post was not to debate whether the details of the reform had changed, but to pursue the broader goal of achieving "irreversible transformation."
The clash began that morning when President Lee wrote on X, "The RKP and others proposed placing the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency, which would handle investigations, and the Prosecution Office, which would handle indictments, within the Ministry of Justice, and giving the Prosecution Office the authority to conduct supplementary investigations. But this government has gone a step further by separating investigations from indictments and assigning them separately to the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of the Interior and Safety."
In response, RKP Senior Spokesperson Park Byeong-eon immediately issued a statement and rebutted President Lee's claim, saying, "After witnessing the de-prosecutorialization of the Ministry of Justice retreat following the impeachment and removal of former President Yoon Suk Yeol and the change of government, we went through the process of changing our party position to place the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency under the Ministry of the Interior and Safety."

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