Jin Hyung-gu

Jin Hyung-gu died on 15 November 2026, aged 81, as reported by Yonhap News Agency, The Hankyoreh and The Herald Business. The cause of death was not made public. His funeral was held at the Seoul St. Mary's Hospital funeral hall in Seoul, with condolence calls from 16 November and the funeral procession on the morning of 18 November 2026. Han Dong-hoon's office announced the arrangements.

Jin Hyung-gu was born on 24 September 1945. Yonhap News Agency reported that he came from Gwangju in Gyeonggi Province. Korean reference sources record that he finished Gwangju elementary school in 1957, Gyeongbok Middle School in 1960 and Gyeongbok High School in 1963. Gyeongbok High School ties later mattered in his career: Korean reference sources describe him as a leading figure among Gyeongbok alumni in the prosecution service.

Jin studied electrical engineering at Seoul National University's College of Engineering and graduated in 1967, an unusual path for a future prosecutor. He passed the 11th national bar examination and completed the first class of the Judicial Research and Training Institute, the body that trains South Korea's judges and prosecutors. He then earned a master's degree in criminal law at Seoul National University's graduate school in February 1975 and a master's degree in comparative law at Southern Methodist University in the United States in 1980.

Jin was known inside the service as a planning specialist. Korean reference sources list his posts as research officer at the Supreme Prosecutors' Office (1983), head of its computer management unit (1985), head of the Ministry of Justice human rights division (1986) and legal affairs division (1987), head of the second criminal division at the Seoul Western District office (1989), prosecutor at the Seoul High Prosecutors' Office (1990), head of general affairs (1991) and investigation (1992) at the Seoul District Prosecutors' Office, second deputy chief prosecutor in Seoul (1993) and chief of the Seoul Western District branch (1994 to 1995).

Promoted to chief prosecutor rank in 1995, he led the Supreme Prosecutors' Office's trial and litigation department and, from January 1997, its inspection department. In March 1998 he was named head of the Supreme Prosecutors' Office's Public Security Department, despite having no earlier public security background. In 1999 he became chief of the Daejeon High Prosecutors' Office.

In June 1999, at a lunch with reporters, Jin said in effect that the prosecution had induced the 1998 strike at the Korea Minting and Security Printing Corporation, the state company that prints banknotes. The comment set off a national scandal over whether the public security prosecutors had engineered a labour dispute. Jin was removed from his post and Justice Minister Kim Tae-jeong was dismissed as well.

A special prosecution team sought an arrest warrant in late July 1999 and Jin was detained on charges including abuse of authority, obstruction of business and violation of the labour relations law. He was released on bail in August 1999. At a National Assembly hearing that month he denied pressuring corporation president Kang Hee-bok, said he had only given legal advice, and described his remark to reporters as a slip made while drunk.

The affair led the National Assembly to pass South Korea's first special counsel law. Special counsel Kang Won-il's team questioned Jin in November 1999 and, as YTN later reported, overturned the earlier conclusion that Jin had acted alone, indicting Kang Hee-bok. In July 2001 the Seoul District Court acquitted Jin of abuse of authority and obstruction of business, finding Kang's account inconsistent, but convicted him of breaching the ban on outside intervention in labour disputes and gave him a one year sentence suspended for two years. The appeal court cut this to eight months suspended for one year, and the Supreme Court upheld the verdict on 15 April 2005. Kim Hyung-tae, an assistant special counsel at the time, later criticised how the investigation was concluded.

After his prosecution career Jin practised as a lawyer. In December 2002 he became publisher of China Life, a monthly magazine about China produced through a tie-up with the People's Daily, explaining that Koreans knew too little about their closest neighbour and biggest exchange partner. Around the same time he chaired a committee to revive memorial projects for Shin Ik-hee (Haegong), saying that following Haegong's life was a way to practise democracy. From 2013 he took part in Lawyers for Human Rights and Unification of Korea, a lawyers' group focused on North Korean human rights and unification.

Jin was married to Choi Young-ok. Yonhap lists his survivors as his wife, his son Jin Dong-gyun (a former prosecutor), his daughters Jin Min-jung and Jin Eun-jung (a lawyer), and his son-in-law Han Dong-hoon. Jin Eun-jung, a Seoul National University law graduate and New York-qualified lawyer, is married to Han Dong-hoon, the former justice minister and People Power Party leader who now sits in the National Assembly as an independent.

Korean reference sources describe Jin as outgoing and frank, a prosecutor who put practical results ahead of principle and who had wide contacts in the press and politics. His later work reflected an interest in China, which he called Korea's closest neighbour, in the democratic legacy of Shin Ik-hee, and in North Korean human rights through Lawyers for Human Rights and Unification of Korea.

Jin's lasting mark on Korean public life is institutional. His 1999 remark triggered the strike-inducement scandal that, together with the clothing lobby affair, produced South Korea's first special counsel investigations. Broadcasters such as YTN and KBS still date the history of the Korean special counsel system to that case. The episode is also often cited in debates about the power of the prosecution's public security divisions, which were later reorganised.

Beyond the 1999 case and his 2005 conviction under the labour union law, Jin's past drew renewed attention after his son-in-law Han Dong-hoon became justice minister in 2022. Newstapa reported that year that a convicted stock manipulator had named Jin in court and that Jin had been listed as an officer of the manipulator's company. Jin was not named in the indictment in that case and was not charged.