Court administration chief counters: “Claim that Cho Hee-dae was involved in Oh Se-hoon’s acquittal disparages the judiciary”

[Financial News] Noh Gyeong-pil, chief of the National Court Administration, strongly dismissed opposition parties’ allegations that Chief Justice Cho Hee-dae had intervened and that the trial was political, in connection with the appellate acquittal of Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon in his Political Funds Act violation case.
At the National Assembly Legislation and Judiciary Committee’s comprehensive audit on the 26th, opposition lawmakers, including those from the Democratic Party, sharply criticized the appellate acquittal of Mayor Oh in the alleged proxy payment of Myeong Tae-gyun’s opinion-polling costs, as well as successive sentence reductions for defendants in cases related to the Dec. 3 emergency martial law.
Democratic Party lawmaker Lee Sung-yoon raised his voice, saying, “The chief justice is acting as if he were an emperor, holding political trials and engaging in political maneuvering. Impeaching Chief Justice Cho Hee-dae is the only answer.” Fellow party lawmaker Kim Ki-pyo also criticized the ruling in Mayor Oh’s case, saying, “If trials are conducted this way, no politician will ever be punished. The ruling is a complete mess.” Rep. Kim Yong-min pointed to the structural problem of judicial appointment and adjudicatory powers being excessively concentrated in the hands of a single chief justice.
Noh directly rejected the criticism, saying, “The chief justice heads judicial administration, but no one, including the chief justice, can intervene in lower-court trials—and no one does.” He said, “Each panel independently determined guilt or innocence and the sentence based on the evidence and facts,” adding that “it is inappropriate to blame the judiciary under Cho Hee-dae for how it handled the case.”
On criticism over the concentration of judicial power, he also expressed regret, saying, “Judicial appointments are made through the Judicial Personnel Committee, whose members are mostly from outside the judiciary, and meetings of Supreme Court justices, so the system does not allow the chief justice to make appointments unilaterally.” He added, “Thinking that court rulings or appointments change depending on who the chief justice is disparages our judiciary, which has already reached a world-class level, far too much.”
There was also a dispute over how quickly the Supreme Court would hear Mayor Oh’s case on appeal. Democratic Party lawmaker Kim Han-gyu cited the case in which the Supreme Court swiftly overturned and remanded President Lee Jae Myung’s Public Official Election Act violation case after 36 days, and asked, “Will Mayor Oh’s case also be handled unusually quickly?” Noh gave the standard response that “the panel handling the case will decide.” He also said that all regular encouragement payments to Supreme Court justices had been put on hold and that guidelines based on the same standards as those for other state agencies were being prepared.
Meanwhile, other legal issues also came under scrutiny at the audit that day. Lee Jin-su, acting Minister of Justice, said the ministry was considering measures including the introduction of a protective custody system in response to a series of murders involving stalking and dating violence. Oh Dong-woon, head of the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO), said of allegations of “emperor golf” at Taereung Golf Course involving President Lee Jae Myung and his wife, “They are indeed subject to investigation by virtue of their positions,” while taking a cautious stance on whether a crime had been committed. In addition, when Rep. Park Eun-jung of the Rebuilding Korea Party pointed out that the imprisoned former President Yoon Suk Yeol and his wife had received 2.19 billion won in prison funds over the course of a year—equivalent to eight times this year’s presidential salary—acting Minister Lee replied, “This does not accord with the purpose of basic prison deposits and needs to be improved.”
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