Broadcast of ex-President Park trial stirs dispute
The corruption trial of Park Geun-hye, which began Tuesday, may be broadcast, a practice the Supreme Court previously prohibited. The decision is expected to come within a week, as court officials are reportedly debating the legality of the issue.
Amid mounting attention to Park’s trial that may send the former president to prison for life, there have also been demands for greater transparency of the hearings. On Tuesday, the Office of Court Administration conducted a survey of judges across the nation, soliciting their views on publicly broadcasting hearings of Park’s trial.
The survey, emailed to judges covering criminal cases across the nation, contained six questions including whether they are willing to have the hearings broadcast, if so to what degree, and if the final verdict should also be broadcast.
At the center of this debate are two issues. First, there is a legality dispute stemming from two seemingly conflicting regulations: the upper court ruling that bans video recording and the Constitutional Court ruling that trial hearings and final sentences shall be revealed to the public. Although previous trials have followed the former rule, there has been criticism that it goes against the latter.
According to Kim Kee-chang, a professor at the Korea University School of Law, the latter stipulation does not imply the trial must be broadcast.
“The stipulation gives citizens access to witness the hearings inside the court, perhaps through a lottery,” he said. “It does not mean, in any way, that the trial needs to be broadcast.”
Kim believes broadcasting the trial may further politicize the event. He cautioned against the phenomenon he called “trial by media” that may pressure judges to rule in accordance with public opinion and not by their unbiased legal interpretations.
On the other hand, Konkuk University law professor Han Sang-hee believes former president Park’s trial should be broadcast as a way of guaranteeing the citizens’ right to know. He considers this right superseding the court rule that has prohibited the practice.
“It was more of a tradition — an authoritarian one — to keep hearings away from the public eye. It’s not much of a legal concern,” he argued. He said it’s time to do away with such practice while caution should be given to privacy in trials where an ordinary citizen is the defendant. “Given the gravity of Park’s trial, it should be open to the public,” he said. “Only matters directly related to national security should be the exception.”
The Supreme Court’s final verdict over Park’s impeachment was broadcasted live and had a 37.7 percent viewership rating. All the testimonies were also recorded and disclosed online. But the corruption trial hearings have not yet been shown.