Police Chief Baek Hae-ryong attends the 2025 National Assembly audit held at the Legislation and Judiciary Committee of the National Assembly on October 27 last year and answers questions from lawmakers. Reporter Kwon Do-hyeon
While the Joint Investigation Team of the Seoul Eastern District Prosecutors’ Office closed the case, saying there was “no substance” to the suspicion of “external pressure to investigate the Incheon Customs drug smuggling case,” Eastern District Prosecutors’ Office Director Lim Eun-jung criticized Baek Hae-ryong’s investigation, saying, “It is no different from the prosecution’s special investigation method that has been criticized.”
In a post posted on Facebook on the afternoon of the 26th, District Prosecutor General Lim wrote, “Yeongdeungpo Police Station caught one of the back and forth words of drug smugglers. The same goes for statements being changed, modified, and refined, investigation documents decorated to match the facts of the charges, and materials unfavorable to proving the charges not included in the records.”
Chief Prosecutor Lim said, referring to Prosecutor Eom Hee-jun, who was singled out as a party to suspicions that former Prime Minister Han Myeong-sook was involved in perjury by conspiring to commit perjury, and said, “I thought a lot about former Prime Minister Han’s violation of the political fund law while looking into the records of cases suspected of being involved in customs drug smuggling.”
He said, “When the Supreme Prosecutor’s Office’s inspection department confirmed how Prosecutor Eom refined the statements of insurance fraudsters and drug offenders and presented them in court during the time of Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-yeol, I was despairing that the prosecution was at this level, and was devastated to face the prosecution that was still the same.”
At the same time, he said, “It is a basic principle of investigation not to overestimate the statements of those involved in the case, and in investigative practice, the statements of drug offenders are even more unreliable. I was frustrated while looking at the minutes of the National Assembly hearing, wondering why Baek Hae-ryong spoke like that as if he did not know.”
District Prosecutor General Lim said, “The investigation is only a process of finding facts, not a process of proving faith, and just as the prosecution should not investigate like that, the police should not investigate like that.”
The joint venture announced on this day, “We have confirmed that there is no substance to the various suspicions raised by Inspector Baek,” and “We have concluded all investigative procedures.” In 2023, Inspector Baek, who was the head of the criminal division at Yeongdeungpo Station, claimed that “there was pressure from the higher-ups to conceal it” when the prosecution continued to reject warrants while investigating Philopon smuggling by Malaysian suspects. As there was no substance to the suspicions of external pressure on the investigation by the Presidential Office of the Yoon Seok-yeol administration, the joint venture did not transfer or indict the officials.
