[단독]Kim Myung-soo forcibly opened the judge’s PC… The central district office is “alright”

It was confirmed on the 18th that the prosecution decided to dismiss the case in which Supreme Court Chief Kim Myung-soo was accused of using illegal methods in the process of investigating the allegations of the’judicial blacklist’.

In late 2017, the Court’s Additional Investigation Committee forcibly opened and viewed the computer of the Court Administration Office without user consent to investigate the blacklist allegations. Accordingly, Rep. Joo Kwang-deok at the time of the Liberal Korean Party (predecessor of the power of the people) accused the Supreme Court of Korea, such as Kim, who approved it, for abuse of authority.

According to the people’s strength and the prosecution, the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office, who investigated the case, rejected the accusation on October 28 last year, saying, “There is no charge of crime.” The prosecution first judged, “It is admitted that the additional investigation committee received a computer hard disk from the court administration without the consent of the users (three judges) and conducted a physical investigation.” At the same time, he said, “I informed the parties of the investigation schedule 2-3 days before the scheduled investigation and asked if they would participate.”Computer hard disk is originally owned by KoreaAs such, it was provided to users for public work.” “The head of the court administration is managing and operating the hard disk. In particular, the hard disk in this case was written for public purposes. It is clear that there is no need to obtain consent from users.“He added.

The power of the people who encountered the reason for the decision to dismiss was strongly opposed. Rep. Kim Ki-hyun, head of the party’s’impeachment transaction fact-finding group’ told JoongAng Ilbo, “The nature of the case is not whether the PC is owned by the state, but people who do not have the right to compulsory investigation open the archived documents in the PC without the consent of the parties.”According to the prosecution’s logic, members of the National Assembly and public officials should also remove everything if the chairman of the National Assembly, the minister of ministries, and the president want to open it.Insisted.

Rep. Kim Woong, who was a former prosecutor, added, “In this way, you can listen to or view messages from business mobile phones that are paid to public officials, and even if you write a memo on the company paper, you can forcibly open it.” Busan District Court Chief Judge Kim Tae-gyu also said, “In the future, judgments or work ideas should be written only in personal notebooks.I was concerned.

On the other hand, there is also an objection. The intention is that if it is a state-owned PC that was used for public affairs, and the purpose of the investigation is also limited to the public domain (confirmation of the existence of a blacklist by the judiciary), it is possible to investigate without the consent of users. In fact, the Seoul Central District Court judged the process of submitting the document file on the computer of the former Deputy Court Administration Officer Lim Jong-heon to the prosecution in October 2019, saying, “Document files created for public service are owned by the state, so the author’s consent or participation in the submission process is not required. It’s not necessary.’ The Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office also cited the court judgment in making this dismissal.

The main point of the suspicion of blacklisting in the judiciary that emerged in 2017 is that the court administration directly under the chief justice of the Supreme Court collects and stores blacklists of judges claiming personnel reforms. As Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Yang Seung-tae, the first fact-finding committee concluded that it was unfounded. However, shortly after Kim’s inauguration, Supreme Court decided to re-investigate and the Investigation Committee was formed again, and the Additional Investigation Committee opened some computer data necessary for clarifying the suspicion without the consent of the judges who used the computer, causing illegal controversy. After the third investigation, the final result of the investigation was announced, saying, “Inspection documents were found, but no blacklist documents were found.”

◇“The fact that the impeachment transaction has not been confirmed” = When asked by Rep. Yoo Sang-beom, a member of the National Assembly Legislative and Judiciary Committee, “wasn’t it possible to communicate with the Democratic Party in advance over the impeachment of Deputy Judge Im Seong-geun?”Please understand that it is difficult to comment on unconfirmed facts.”Answered in writing. On the 15th, the power of the people rejected Judge Im’s resignation letter and accused Chief Justice Kim of abuse of authority to be the subject of impeachment prosecution. This accusation was also allocated to the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office.
Reporter Hyun Il-hoon [email protected]