---
title: "Prosecutor Says Colleagues Share Blame for Abolition and Questions New Agency’s Nominee"
description: "Lim Eun-jung said the nominee to run the new serious-crimes agency ignored her 2018 complaint and asked to testify at his hearing"
author: "rews desk"
published: 2026-10-05T03:15:52.541Z
modified: 2026-10-05T11:12:04Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/prosecutor-says-colleagues-share-blame-for-abolition-and-que-9ee005
language: en
tags: ["politics", "korea", "judiciary", "investigation", "trump", "asia"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# Prosecutor Says Colleagues Share Blame for Abolition and Questions New Agency’s Nominee

*Lim Eun-jung said the nominee to run the new serious-crimes agency ignored her 2018 complaint and asked to testify at his hearing*

By rews desk · October 5, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/prosecutor-says-colleagues-share-blame-for-abolition-and-que-9ee005

## In brief

- Lim Eun-jung said prosecutors who acquiesced under Yoon Suk Yeol share blame for the service’s abolition
- The 78-year-old prosecution service was replaced Friday by an indictment office and an investigation agency
- Lim said Kim Ji-yong, the nominee to lead the new agency, ignored her 2018 complaint over a covered-up assault case
- She asked to testify at his confirmation hearing and filed an information-disclosure request on Saturday
- President Lee is pushing the appointment ahead despite ruling-party objections; a hearing has not yet been held

A regional chief of South Korea’s new serious-crimes investigation agency said on Monday that prosecutors who went along with, tolerated or stayed silent under former President Yoon Suk Yeol share the blame for the abolition of the prosecution service.

The service, in place for 78 years, was dissolved last week and replaced on Friday by two bodies: an indictment office that brings cases to court and the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency, which takes over the prosecution’s investigative powers, [according to the Korea Times](https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/amp/southkorea/law-crime/20261002/korea-abolishes-prosecutors-office-after-78-years-putting-new-criminal-justice-system-to-test). President Lee Jae Myung has requested a parliamentary confirmation hearing for his nominee to lead the new agency, Kim Ji-yong, a former prosecutor.

Lim Eun-jung, who heads the agency’s Gwangju branch, made her case in a Facebook post reprinting her farewell address at the Seoul Eastern District Prosecutors’ Office last Thursday. “When the prosecution service’s nameplate was removed, it was as painful as if flesh were being torn off,” she wrote.

“It would not have come this far if not for Yoon Suk Yeol,” Ms. Lim wrote. “But Yoon did not seize power and hold on to it by his own strength, and Yoon was the end, not the beginning.” She added that she was working to keep down the resentment that keeps surging up toward “the colleagues who sympathized, stood by and stayed silent.”

She called the abolition a sad outcome brought about by a prosecution that had been “an assailant of the era,” and said the new indictment office and investigation agency should treat the old service as a cautionary example. “Someone who must serve as that cautionary example cannot become No. 1,” she wrote of Mr. Kim. “I question his qualifications as serious-crimes investigator No. 1.”

Ms. Lim said she had filed a complaint in 2018, when Mr. Kim headed a Supreme Prosecutors’ Office inspection division, asking him to investigate dereliction of duty by officials who covered up a sexual assault case involving a former prosecutor, Jin Dong-kyun. The complaint was ignored, she said. “Not once did I hear his voice saying this must not happen when the prosecution did what it must not do, or failed to do what it must,” she wrote.

Ms. Lim said she had publicly asked to be called as a witness or reference at Mr. Kim’s confirmation hearing, and that on Saturday she filed an information-disclosure request to establish how her complaint was handled at the time.

Mr. Lee is pressing ahead with the appointment despite objections from within his own camp, where hard-liners have labeled the nominee a “pro-Yoon” loyalist, [the Korea JoongAng Daily reported](https://www.koreajoongangdaily.com/korea/korea-launches-scaleddown-prosecution-new-investigation-agency-in-major-reform/12902427). The standoff follows [other friction over the new system’s first days](https://rews.cc/a/the-new-indictment-office-s-top-watchdog-calls-the-justice-m-66fb36), and until a confirmation hearing is held Mr. Kim cannot take office.