The current chief judge who appears in the 'suspicion of solicitation of new COVID-19 drugs' by Minister of Justice candidate Kim Seung-won said, "We currently have no position to disclose regarding the matter."
On the 7th, Chief Judge Jeong In-jae of the Seoul Central District Court distributed a media notice with this content through the court's public information office.
The public information officer explained, “Currently, there are many inquiries regarding issues related to judges belonging to our court regarding candidates for the Minister of Justice,” and added, “We are delivering this on behalf of the judges in question.”
This is a position that Chief Judge Jeong made four days after controversy arose when a photo taken with 'broker' Yang and candidate Kim in February 2022 was made public on the 3rd.
He did not attend the trial last week due to receiving training at the Judicial Research and Training Institute, but returned today.
Mr. Yang, pictured with Chief Judge Jeong, was asked by Genencell CEO Kang Mo in October 2021 to help speed up the approval of the clinical trial plan for a COVID-19 treatment, and conveyed this to Candidate Kim, who was a first-term lawmaker at the time.
Candidate Kim requested prompt processing from then Minister of Food and Drug Safety Kim Kang-lip on the 12th of the same month, and the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety approved the plan for clinical trials 2 and 3 of the Genencell treatment on the 26th, two weeks later.
However, it was later revealed that Genencell had obtained clinical trial approval based on omitted or fabricated data, and Mr. Kang was placed under investigation.
In December 2023, approximately 1 year and 10 months after the meeting between Candidate Kim, Mr. Yang, and Chief Judge Jeong, the arrest warrant for Mr. Kang on charges such as attempted fraud was dismissed.
At this time, the warrant judge in charge was Chief Judge Jeong.
He and Candidate Kim are seniors and juniors at Seoul Law School, and after passing the bar exam a year apart, they worked together at the Jeonju District Court in 2002.
Independent lawmaker Han Dong-hoon raised suspicions that in 2023, the Supreme Prosecutor's Office requested the Supreme Court Court Administration to exclude Chief Judge Jeong from the warrant review of Kang's case, but the request was not accepted.
Mr. Kang was arrested by a different warrant judge in January 2024 after reapplying for an arrest warrant.
When suspicions arose that Candidate Kim may have asked Chief Judge Jeong, with whom he is a close friend, to grant leniency to Mr. Kang after receiving a request from Mr. Yang, Candidate Kim explained, "I only ran into Chief Judge Jeong and Mr. Yang by chance at a public private meeting, and I have not met or contacted them since."
He added that he could not have predicted the investigation into Mr. Kang and others at the time of the meeting and was not aware of the request for and dismissal of an arrest warrant in December 2023.
However, the controversy does not appear to be subsiding as a lawmaker additionally disclosed a transcript of Candidate Kim calling Chief Judge Jeong his "best friend" and inviting Yang to a drink with him on October 14, 2021.
