| Lee Jung-hee, right, who ran in the 2012 presidential election as a candidate from the now-defunct Unified Progressive Party (UPP), trades barbs with Park, a candidate from the ruling Saenuri Party, during a televised debate on Dec. 4, 2012. / Captured from YouTube |
By Hong Dam-young, Park Si-soo
With politicians reaching a consensus on an independent counsel for the Choi Soon-sil scandal probe, attention is now on who will become captain of the 100-member investigation team.
Two names agreed by the ruling and opposition parties will be put on the table in coming days and scandal-plagued President Park Geun-hye will pick one. The selected special prosecutor will have an unfettered right to control the team for up to 120 days from mid-December, during which it will conduct a no-holds-barred investigation of allegations raised against Park and her arrested longtime confidant Choi Soon-sil.
A heated debate over the best candidate is raging and several names have been mentioned. But on social media one name is receiving much support: Lee Jung-hee.
Lee, 46, a graduate of Seoul National University's college of law and a certified attorney, is widely considered Park's biggest political foe who has deep-seated personal animosity toward the embattled head of state. Lee ran in the 2012 presidential election as a candidate from the now-defunct Unified Progressive Party (UPP), trading barbs with Park, a candidate from the ruling Saenuri Party.
Lee's animosity to Park was made public with a remark she made during a televised debate open to the top three candidates: “I joined the (presidential) race to make Park lose.”
| Lee Jung-hee, who was a chairwoman of the now-defunct Unified Progressive Party (UPP), holds a press interview with party members in front of the Constitutional Court in Jongro, downtown Seoul on Dec. 19, 2014. It was the day the court ordered the party to disband, after Park's administration labeled Lee's left-leaning party and its lawmakers “sympathizers” of the North Korean regime and filed a lawsuit to disband the party. / Korea Times file |
Park fought back after being elected. Her administration labeled Lee's left-leaning party and its lawmakers “sympathizers” of the North Korean regime and filed a suit to disband the party. In December 2014, the Constitutional Court handed down a controversial ruling against the party. Lee has since kept a low profile.
The outpouring of support for Lee reflects deep-running distrust of a prosecution that is legally under Park's control.
Regardless of Lee's chances of being designated as a special prosecutor, netizens said she would be the “best fit” for the position.
“I want to see Lee giving the finishing blow to Park,” a netizen wrote. “Lee should be the best one to probe into Park's scandal and bring up the truth.”
But legal experts say Lee is unqualified, citing the minimum legal requirement of 15 years' field experience as either a judge or a prosecutor to become an independent counsel. Lee's experience does not meet the requirements. In addition, the law does not allow a person with experience of working for a political party to take the job for fear of a biased investigation.
Meanwhile, the planned special investigation will check a total of 15 allegations, including leaked presidential documents and confidential information given to Choi and her associates, and Choi's alleged abuse of her close ties to the President to extort money from big Korean companies.
The ruling and opposition parties have agreed to pass a bill establishing the independent counsel during a plenary session Thursday. The agreement follows the biggest anti-president rally in decades on Saturday, where nearly a million protesters gathered in central Seoul to demand Park's resignation and a thorough investigation of the scandal.