Jin Hyeonggu

Jin Hyeonggu was a South Korean prosecutor who rose to one of the most senior posts in the country's prosecution service, serving as Chief Prosecutor of the Daejeon High Prosecutors' Office. He spent his career in the Supreme Prosecutors' Office and regional prosecutorial offices, and for much of his later life he was best known to the Korean public for the role he played in one of the defining prosecutorial scandals of the late 1990s. In 1999, while heading the Central Investigation Department of the Supreme Prosecutors' Office, he became the central figure in a controversy over the Korea Minting and Security Printing Corporation, after remarks attributed to him suggested the prosecution had encouraged a labor strike at the state run firm to help push through a restructuring plan. The episode, widely referred to in South Korean media at the time as the strike inducement affair, led to his resignation from the post and placed the independence and conduct of the prosecution service under intense public scrutiny for years afterward.

Beyond that episode, Jin built a long career within the prosecutorial hierarchy, holding senior administrative and investigative posts before being named to lead the Daejeon High Prosecutors' Office, one of the senior regional command posts in the South Korean prosecution system. Colleagues and commentators who discussed his career generally described him as a product of the traditional, insular culture of the Korean prosecution, a culture that was itself repeatedly criticized and reformed in the decades after his retirement.

In recent years Jin became known to a new generation of the Korean public for a different reason: he was the father in law of Han Dong-hoon, the former Justice Minister and leader of the People Power Party who became one of South Korea's most prominent conservative politicians. Headlines about Jin's life and death have accordingly introduced him to many readers first and foremost through that family connection, even though his own career in the prosecution predated his son in law's rise by decades.

Jin Hyeonggu died on 15 November 2026 at the age of 81. Korean news outlets reported his death under headlines identifying him both by his own decades long record as a senior prosecutor and by his connection to Han Dong-hoon. As of this writing, the cause of death, the place of death, and details of a funeral or memorial service have not been made public, and this page will be updated as confirmed details become available. Tributes and reactions from former colleagues in the legal community and from political circles connected to his family had not yet been widely reported at the time of this writing.