Former South Korean Prosecutor General Visits the Law School
On November 8, former South Korean Prosecutor General Joon Gyu Kim visited the University of Chicago Law School to provide students with a lecture on “New Initiatives on International Cooperation in Criminal Justice.” Kim served as the Vice-President of the International Association of Prosecutors, and focused his talk on the inadequacy of traditional law enforcement tools to fight and prosecute transnational crime. He used several examples from Korea of how the traditional tools of extradition and mutual assistance are no longer as effective as they could be. He proposed introducing a system of direct communication among criminal justice personnel across borders, in lieu of working exclusively through diplomatic channels.
A career prosecutor, Kim was a driving force for introducing greater transparency into the prosecutorial process. He proposed a new Citizens Committee on Prosecution, which will operate much like our own grand jury system, and is also widely credited with reinstilling morale among the procuracy in the wake of several scandals. The talk was sponsored by the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association and the Criminal Law Society.