South Korean documentary “The Red Herring”

The South Korean documentary “The Red Herring” has drawn attention on the dangers of political prosecutors by following the fate of Cho Kuk, the former justice minister who spearheaded prosecutors’ reform.

“There appeared to be an issue with the prosecutors’ office and the media from the standpoint of the general public, but Cho also had a problem.

That was how the majority of them felt. My viewpoint was not far off the mark “At an interview with Xinhua one day before the film’s release in local theatres on Wednesday, director Yi Seung-jun said.
Yi is most known for directing “In the Absence,” a documentary film on the catastrophic Sewol ferry disaster in 2014, which was the first-ever South Korean documentary to get an Academy Award nomination in 2020.

According to the Korean Box Office Information System (KOBIS), “The Red Herring” ranked third in the domestic box office for the first three days of its release, a remarkable feat for a documentary.

Yi claimed he was “astounded” by “unexposed and concealed facts” he discovered when reviewing records related to the so-called “Cho Kuk incident” and questioning others who watched the trial process in court and were even grilled by prosecutors due to Cho and his family’s favorable testimony.

Cho has been a proponent of prosecution reform since his days as a professor at the prestigious Seoul National University School of Law, and he has become a symbol of it as he and his family went through the rigours of overhauling the prosecution service, one of the country’s most powerful institutions.

Cho was a media storm from the moment he was nominated for Justice Minister, and he resigned five weeks into his term in 2019.

To divert attention away from what may be more essential, unverified media claims that Cho had an affair with a starlet or that his daughter drove a fancy automobile were scattered across the route of investigations.

The majority of these reports turned out to be false later on.

“The approach taken by prosecutors and media is a bit of a red herring. It appears that they had a specific goal in mind. To accomplish the goal, it appears that (prosecutors) leaked material, which (journalists) received at face value “explained the director.

Cho was charged with 12 counts, and his wife received a four-year term from the Supreme Court.
Critics claim that the prosecution service was politically targeting Cho, who was a key architect of the previous government’s prosecution reform initiatives aimed at limiting prosecutors’ excessive power.

Prosecutors in South Korea have the right to indict or not indict people, as well as to begin investigations that are typically carried out by police in other nations.

They retain the right to probe politically sensitive cases of corruption and economic crimes even after the reform campaign.

“I am not implying that every prosecutor is wicked and deserving of criticism. I believe that the majority of prosecutors are dedicated to their work “Yi said.

The director questioned a group of politically driven prosecutors, claiming that their enormous power will push them to convict every defendant in order to justify their intrusive investigations and indictments.

“Cho isn’t shown to be guilty or not in this film. It is possible to make a decision outside of the documentary. Its goal is to determine if the (legal) procedure was fair “Yi remarked.

“I’m not going to give you a (predetermined) correct answer. People, I believe, have been lost in a flood of media stories that have arbitrarily taken one side in recent years. I attempted to present the other viewpoint and pose a question to the audience “he stated.

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