RE: Re: Judicial Independence

There has been an ongoing row here about the doings of Supreme Court Justice Shin Young-chul. Justice Shin was recently elevated from his position as the head judge of the Seoul Central District Court. While head of the district court, Justice Shin sent a series of e-mails to district judges, encouraging them to speed up trials of anti-U.S. beef protestors. These e-mails instructed some judges to discourage motions that would frustrate such prosecutions.

It should be pointed out that judges in South Korea do not have perpetual appointments. They are promoted and demoted based on their performance, which is in part decided by the head of their court. This means all the judges e-mailed by Justice Shin owed their future appointments in part to his evaluations of him.

When the scandal broke, charges were laid against Justice Shin. Finally, the Supreme Court's Chief Justice elected only to verbally reprimand him. Justice Shin's written apology followed, and that was the extent of his punishment thus far.

A number of judges across the city and the country are angry at this outcome. They met to consider demanding that Justice Shin resign, or otherwise the National Assembly should impeach him.