— On the Fight Against the Moon Jae-in Administration’s Oppression and Human Rights Infringement —
1. Introduction
Even though Reverend Jun Kwang-hoon should not be election campaigning according to Article 18, Clause 1 of the Public Official Election Act, and one cannot conduct campaigning before the official campaign period from April 2-14, 2020, the prosecution has indicted him for violating the Public Official Election Act six times from December 2, 2019 until January 21, 2020 for asking people to support a Free Conservative party at rallies, and for defamation for stating that “Moon Jae-in is a spy” and “The President has tried to communize South Korea” at the October 9, 2020 nationwide protest for Moon Jae-in’s resignation.
But these are not punishable acts in a free democratic nation where the basic right of freedom of speech is guaranteed. The essence of this case is that the Moon administration is abusing the criminal justice system to investigate, arrest, and prosecute him solely to suppress Reverend Jun for denying the free democratic system defined by the South Korean Constitution, stipulated that the administration is a Jusapa regime that follows communist North Korea, and continuously made his criticism known through mass rallies.
2. The Procedural Problems
A. The First Request for an Arrest Warrant and Its Rejection
As Reverend Jun successfully held mass rallies denouncing the Moon administration, they judged that their strategy for the general election and even their existence could be jeopardized if the rallies continued until the April 15, 2020 general election, that they made all efforts into arresting the pastor. The first arrest warrant was requested for reasons related to the mass rally held on October 3, 2019. If one considers the fact that the October 3rd mass rally was an assembly where at least one million people gathered to protest the tyranny of the Moon administration at Gwanghwamun, the center of Seoul, the reasons stated on the warrant for the arrest—a 2-week recovery period for a police officer’s bruises and 1.87 million Won worth of property damages, are actually relatively trivial. The rally proceeded in a surprisingly peaceful manner and it was a rally that manifested the highly civilized mindset of the South Korean people. Yet, the Jongno Police attributed the responsibility for the aforementioned incidents to the pastor that occurred during a trivial conflict between North Korean defectors and the police due to the case of the North Korean defector mother and son starving to death that happened that day and requested an arrest warrant on December 24, 2019. However, Reverend Jun posed no risk of flight nor risk of destruction of evidence, which are requirements for arrest stipulated by the Korean Criminal Procedure Code that the police could not submit any justification for the arrest warrant. Eventually, the request for an arrest warrant was just a political oppression and the court also rejected the request for the warrant for lack of justification posed no risk of flight after interrogating the pastor on January 2, 2020.
B. The Investigation and the Second Request for an Arrest Warrant
Yet, the Jongno Police embarked upon an investigation beginning January 3, 2020, the day after the first request for an arrest warrant was rejected, to make a second request for a warrant.
Normally, an investigation can be initiated by an investigation agency’s own cognizance for such need, but in this situation, it was highly likely that the people would criticize such an investigation was an infringement upon a person’s basic rights. So, the police took the route of initiating the investigation in the form of a pro-government civic group, Peace Tree Inc., filing a complaint against Reverend Jun. Peace Tree is a group which manages more than 50 large-scale monitoring personnel and uses almost half of its operating expenses to accuse and indict major right-wing figures including Reverend Jun. It has been revealed through witness examination that the Jongno Police used more than 5 million Won of taxpayer’s money to fabricate evidence against Reverend Jun as the private group filed a complaint against hi, for violating the Public Official Election Act. This is an abuse of governmental authority that cannot happen in a free democratic nation, yet the police submitted a 44-page request for an arrest warrant for the second time.
Yet surprisingly the court that has been tamed by the Moon administration after its inauguration, through investigation and prosecution under the name of eliminating deep-rooted evil within the judiciary, issued an arrest warrant on February 25, 2020 and even rejected Reverend Jun’s request for a proper examination of the warrant. When one considers the fact that the grounds of the arrest was Reverend Jun asking people to support a Free Conservative party for the April 15, 2020 general election, this is a tyranny that cannot happen in a free democratic nation, and the courts that guarantees the basic rights of the people effectively became the puppet of the regime to commit the crime of an illegal arrest. This happened before each party decided on their candidate, and, in this case, the defense team provided that pre-election campaigning cannot be valid based on the Constitutional Court’s decision in the Roh Moo-hyun impeachment case (full bench judgment of the Roh Moo-hyun impeachment case sentenced on May 14, 2004), and that the imprisonment of the pastor was clearly a retaliation committed by the Moon administration. In other words, even though there was no justification for the arrest, as he was no flight risk, all evidence were already collected, and even the court itself confirmed it was true when a request for an arrest warrant for the violation of the assembly and demonstration law was made just two months ago, Reverend Jun was still arrested when there was no change of facts.
C. Bail and Illegal Conditions of Bail
After the prosecution indicted Reverend Jun, his defense team requested his bail on March 25, 2020. Not only was his arrest very inappropriate but this was clearly a case that met all the conditions of bail stipulated by the Criminal Procedure Code. In addition, the defense team expected an expedited bail decision due to his life being endangered if he does not receive appropriate medical treatment due to a major cervical spine surgery he received in April 2018 and he needs 2 insulin shots daily for severe diabetes.
Yet the court violated the criminal code that requires a decision be made within 7 days by continuously postponing the decision and finally permitted bail on April 20, 2020 when the April 15th election was over.
Even when reluctantly granting the bail, the court added the following conditions:
3. The defendant, with the exception of counsel, shall not meet or contact via phone, letter, fax, email, text message or through social media anyone who knows facts needed by this case.
4. The defendant shall not attend any illegal assembly or rally that can be related to this case.
However, this is in conflict with the Criminal Procedure Code Article 98 (Conditions for Bail), the main purpose of which is to secure the defendant’s attendance and additionally stipulates that the conditions are only to protect the victims and witnesses from threats to prevent destruction of evidence and its contents are excessively abstract and unclear.
In other words, there are many persons who may qualify as a person related to the case in the third clause of the bail conditions and there are many degrees of relatedness, yet one cannot tell who with what degree of relatedness qualifies to be a person related to the case. To prevent Reverend Jun from contacting a person who has beneficial information to him infringes upon the essential contents of the right to defend him and is clearly an illegal condition of bail.
Also, it is unclear what kind of rallies or demonstrations could be related to the case under clause 4 of the bail conditions. Reverend Jun asked for support of the Free Conservative party during the April 15, 2020 general election, but with the election already over, we don’t know what kind of rallies or demonstrations can fall under this clause. Also, the degree of illegality varies widely from violent demonstrations to minor violations of administrative procedures, but in many cases, illegal rallies and demonstrations can only be judged by postmortem trials, so we have no idea just how much the court has banned from participating in which rallies and demonstrations. Such bail conditions imposed by the court, considering the uncertainty and disadvantages of criminal punishment in the event of a violation, is virtually a condition that prohibits all demonstrations, and even the judgment of the violation is left entirely to the discretion of the court.
D. Revocation of Bail and Remand
Although Reverend Jun was eventually released on bail, he was invited to the Gwanghwamun rally on August 15th (National Liberation Day), which was legally held, but due to the Seoul Administrative Court’s decision to suspend rallies and the pastor delivering a 10-minute speech, he was remanded into custody without being questioned. The court said that the reason for revocation of bail was that Reverend Jun violated clause 4 of his bail condition by attending an assembly or rally that could be related to the case or was illegal.
Yet, the August 15th Gwanghwamun rally was a legal assembly that was allowed by the Seoul Administrative Court, and from the defense’s viewpoint, Reverend Jun’s bail revocation and imprisonment happened without any legal basis and only when the Moon administration and its supporters strongly criticized his attendance to the rally based on Covid-19, that the court was forced to illegally detain his person.
3. The Substantial Problem
A. Violation of the Public Official Election Act
It cannot be a crime in a free democratic country where freedom of expression is a basic right that is guaranteed, to ask for support of the Free Conservative party that advocates the free democratic system guaranteed by the Constitution and defends the market economy. And because Reverend Jun made his speech at the rally before each party’s candidates were determined, it cannot be an election campaign because, as stated before, the Constitutional Court ruled during Roh Moo-hyun’s impeachment trial that election candidates had to be determined prior to any activity constituting an election campaign.
Even in the November 6, 2020 ruling of the Kim Kyung-soo case by the Seoul High Court, even for “election campaign-related” which is a broader notion than “election campaign”, the high court interpreted that the determination of the candidates was necessary, so while he was found guilty of fabricating comments, he was found not guilty for violating the Public Official Election Act. In the case of Professor Im Miri being sued by the ruling party for writing a newspaper column where she promoted to not voting for the ruling party, the prosecution itself did not indict for the reason being that candidates were yet to be determined.
It is a given right for a citizen of a democratic country to freely express their political view. Ultimately, the essence of this case is oppression by the ruling government criticized by Reverend Jun for emphasizing freedom of expression when they were the opposition party in the past.
B. Regarding Defamation
Reverend Jun expressing President Moon as a “spy” can be seen in the same vein as a foreign press calling President Moon as “Kim Jong-un’s top spokesman” and is only an expression of his opinion. The pastor has said that his statement was based on Moon himself having said that he respects a left-wing philosopher Shin Young-bok, calling Kim Won-bong a hero who is the founder of the Korean Army, and sending the First Lady to lay flowers on the grave of Yoon I-sang. It is difficult to understand why Reverend Jun was indicted for defamation when these are all facts. All the facts that led Reverend Jun to express his opinion that “Moon Jae-in is a spy” are true and the President, who is a public figure, is allowed a wide range of freedom of criticism, so the pastor’s charge of defamation is unfounded.
In addition, it is a well-known fact that the policies Moon carried out after being elected as president were pro-North Korea and after the general election, Majority Floor Leader Lee In-young explicitly expressed his socialist trait by insisting that the concept of land disclosure should be addressed as a subject of constitutional amendment. One of the core figures of the Moon administration, Cho Kuk, who briefly served as Minister of Justice, mentioned in his master’s thesis “Study of the formation and development of Soviet socialist legal theory and criminal legal theory: 1917-1938” that law was not a means to guarantee people’s freedom and rights but as a means to maintain dictatorship at the socialism stage, where he provides no criticism to such legal concept, implying that he agrees with the concept.
In addition to the Moon administration’s key figures being as such, despite the ongoing nuclear weapons development in North Korea after his inauguration and stressing peace and unification with them despite their threats to South Korea, considering the fact that his actions weaken our national security and invites criticism, that is why the pastor’s expression that “The President is trying to communize South Korea” is not a defamation considering that it is based on facts.
Especially since defamation is an offense subject to the victim’s willingness to punish the offender, the victim Moon Jae-in ignored the court’s fact-check inquiry regarding the intent to punish and the prosecutor in charge of bringing up charges was not interested in confirming his intent, so the court closed the case despite repeated requests from the defense for confirmation of the victim’s intention. Such cannot happen in a normal trial.
4. Conclusion
In a constitutional state nobody is above the law. All citizens of the Republic of Korea including judges have to observe the law, and a judge’s mission is to protect the people’s basic right guaranteed by the Constitution from any tyranny. Yet, in this case, where the law by name only and in reality, there were political oppression and infringement of human rights, the court gave up the role of the agency to protect the people’s basic rights.
U.S. Congressman Chris Smith criticized in a December 11th statement that said “the [Korean] government on the local and national level use the response to COVID as a pretext to curtail religious worship and free speech, directed at critics of the President.” The international community has even now begun to criticize South Korea’s unconstitutional and anti-democratic dictatorial legislation and application of law.
The defense team will now be dropping our previous attitude of trusting the court and dedicate solely to legal battles to tell the world that this case is a case of political and religious oppression and human rights infringement and want to fight alongside the world’s conscientious forces.
December 21, 2020
The Joint Defense Team for Rev. Jun Kwang-hoon
