Before former South Korean President Moon Jae-in left office, the final arrangement was to pass legislation to transfer the investigative power of the procuratorial system to the police system, so as to avoid the political pursuit of Yoon Seok-yue, who came from the procuratorial system, as soon as he came to power.
In September, the new law is about to take effect, which means that the procuratorial system, which is Yin Xiyue's family, will lose most of its investigative powers. For Yin Xiyue, the most convenient way to continue to hunt down the former government is to take the police system under his command.
On July 15, the Ministry of Administration and Security (MINISTRY OF Security) issued an order that a new police department, the Police Department, be established within the ministry on August 2 to be responsible for personnel, supervision, and disciplinary affairs.
Li Xiangmin, the minister of safety who was arranged by Yin Xiyue to deal with this matter, was not only a classmate of Yin Xiyue, but also an absolute close confidant. Although he has repeatedly guaranteed the most sensitive personnel appointment and investigation powers, South Korean public opinion generally believes that once the Yoon Seok-woo government successfully establishes this department, the police system will completely become a pawn in the hands of the Yoon Seok-yue government, and at its disposal, the Yoon government will inevitably carry out a major purge to fully control the police system.
As soon as the news came out, it immediately triggered a fierce opposition from the police system. There are more than 650 police commissioners across South Korea, and on July 23, 189 people gathered in Chungcheongnam-do to protest yoon Seok-wook's government's blatant interference in the affairs of the police system. In addition to those present, some high-level police officers, although not attending the meeting, explicitly agreed with the purpose of the meeting and sent flower pots with their names to the scene. All of them were put together, a total of 357 people, and more than half of the top levels of the South Korean police system opposed Yoon Seok-yue's meddling in the police system.
On July 24, someone within the police system proposed to expand the protests from senior police officers to 140,000 police officers in South Korea, and held a protest meeting on the 30th. With 140,000 police officers gathered, you can imagine what kind of chaos it would be.
The situation became tense. The attitude of the Yin Xiyue government to this matter is to insist on tough suppression. On the 25th, in response to the protests, Li Xiangmin directly labeled the police system with a "military coup" on the grounds that the police were armed with guns, comparing it with the military coup that brought Chun Doo-hwan to power in 1979.
On the 26th, when Yin Xiyue listened to Li Xiangmin's work report, he did not shy away from his intention to attack the police system. While characterizing the protests of senior police officers as a "major violation of discipline" against the government, Yin Xiyue also stated that the establishment of the new "police station" is a reasonable improvement of police personnel and the police system.
On the 26th, the spokesman of the South Korean presidential office released a message that those who entered the police rank accounted for 96.35% of the total police force, but only 2.3% of the police cadres who served as police officers or above accounted for 2.3% of the patrol officers. It's almost like an open fire telling the police system that the president's next step is to purge you. At the same time, this is also Yin Xiyue dividing the police system to attract "defectors".
After the Yoon Seok-yue government successively threw out the two major crimes of "military coup" and "major disciplinary violations", the South Korean police system announced on the 27th that the 140,000 police protest meeting had been "voluntarily" canceled.
It is worth noting that Yoon Seok-wook and Lee Sang-min clearly exploited the fearful mentality of The Police System in South Korean society in their handling of this matter. Over the past few decades, South Korea has experienced a history of transformation from a "police republic" to a "procuratorial republic."
The so-called "police republic", that is, the use of police power by those in power to impose repressive rule in the country, is precisely because of this, the South Korean people have a bad perception of it, and even still have a fearful mentality. The so-called "procuratorial republic" has a bad reputation. After the democratization process in South Korea, the procuratorial system seized the power of investigation and became a tool of political struggle in South Korea, and its main task was to fight against the opposition party or the former government. South Korean presidents go to jail "to" the role of the prosecutorial system. Yin Xiyue himself sent in two former presidents, which can be said to be the best in the "procuratorial republic".
Before the Moon jae-in government left, the procuratorial system stripped the investigative power of the prosecution system and handed it over to the police system, which may mean another change in the role of prosecutors and police in South Korean society. Yin Xiyue was anxious to take action against the police system, and to put it bluntly, it was still a political operation, in order to get the investigative power that the police system was about to grasp.
This motivation has also aroused the disgust of South Korean public opinion, because since coming to power on May 10, in addition to focusing on political struggles and international sides, Yoon Seok-yue has not paid attention to inflation and the increasingly serious COVID-19 epidemic problems that the people are most concerned about, but has recently shown more and more arbitrary and cronyism.
It is worth mentioning that one of the important reasons why Yin Xiyue was able to come to power as a Conservative Party candidate was the complete failure of the Moon Jae-in government in controlling house prices. To put it bluntly, it is still a matter of people's livelihood. If Yoon Seok-yue can't learn his lesson and blindly indulges in political power, 5 years later, the South Korean regime will rotate, and its fate may be worrying.