검찰개혁의 방향, 과제, 전망: 박근혜 정부의 검찰개혁논의에 부쳐

Among the various issues about the prosecutorial reform, this paper concentrates on the following : the separation of the monopolized power of public prosecution services(PPS) and the democratic control over the PPS’ power. In the race of presidential erection in 2012, the leading candidates, including Park Geun-hye, pledged to remove the Central Investigation Department(CID) from the Supreme Public Prosecutors Office and to establish a new independent system in charge of corruption cases for reforming the prosecution. President Park abolished the CID right away. However, nowadays there are largely controversial debates on the establishment of the independent prosecutorial agency. The NGOs and many scholars have long proposed the independent prosecutorial organ should be an exclusively responsible agency for investigating corruption cases by high-ranking, powerful officials, including public prosecutors. Meanwhile, the PPS hold some differing view. That is, they prefer to enact a general law for the ‘special counsel’ which will be appointed whenever any corruption case is not proper for the PPS’s investigation. This paper argues the establishment of a independent organ for the investigation of corruption cases. We have experienced that the investigation results of PPS never guaranteed a thorough probe into the corruption cases in which many high-ranking officials or the President’s relatives were involved. And the PPS’s suggestion is not a right answer, because there are unnecessary political debates to determine whether the case has a special need to be investigated by special counsel in each case. The second issue this paper reviews is a democratic control over the PPS’s power. Now there are more and more concerns about the excessive and active use of prosecution power against the critics of government policies. Such abuse of the prosecution power should be controlled by citizens’ participation system. This paper analyzes the current system of citizens’ participation in the activities of the PPS and finally the idea of direct erection of the director of the district prosecutor’s office.