The impeachment of former President Park Geun-hye provided an opportunity to drill out the long-established bad practices put in place during nine years of a conservative government. The Moon Jae-in government, which launched with the support of the candlelight people, presented the eradication of long-established irregularities as its key state task. The government aimed to right a state power system gone awry. Its efforts were divided in two directions: holding people responsible and changing the system.

So far, the government's efforts concerning key figures have proceeded at a rapid pace, but discussions on institutional reforms have failed to cut through the surface.

■ Quick Short Steps to Hold Key Figures Responsible

The launch of the new government accelerated the replacement of key figures.

Currently, the government's efforts concerning people are made in four tracks. The basic track follows the investigation of the special prosecutor, Park Young-soo. Park's prosecution team investigated the "Park Geun-hye and Choi Soon-sil scandal" and their abuse of state power and arrested and prosecuted the political heavyweights in the Park Geun-hye government, such as former President Park; Choi Soon-sil; Kim Ki-choon, former chief of staff; Cho Yoon-sun, former minister of culture, sports and tourism; and Lee Jae-yong, vice chairman of Samsung Electronics.

The internal investigations of the Moon Jae-in government's Cheong Wa Dae and the National Intelligence Service also accelerated the efforts to root out problematic figures. Cheong Wa Dae discovered documents from the Park Geun-hye government and uncovered the fact that the previous government had manipulated the time that the president received the report on the Sewol accident and requested the Prosecution Service to launch an investigation.

A task force to eradicate long-established irregularities in the National Intelligence Service (NIS) revealed various illegal activities that the intelligence agency had carried out during the Lee Myung-bak government. This led to additional investigations on former NIS Director Won Sei-hoon, and a prosecutors' investigation of former President Lee Myung-bak is now in sight. Key figures in the MB (Lee Myung-bak) government including Kim Tae-hyo, former Cheong Wa Dae secretary for foreign strategy, are also subject to an investigation.

Among the heavyweights in the Park Geun-hye government, Woo Byung-woo, former Cheong Wa Dae senior secretary for civil affairs, and Choi Yun-su, former second assistant director of the National Intelligence Service, are being investigated for their involvement in the "blacklist." Investigations by Cheong Wa Dae and the intelligence service have uncovered irregularities, which in turn hve led the prosecutors to launch an investigation and seek judicial procedures, and this is the order in which the current government is working to hold relevant people responsible.

The Prosecution Service is not just waiting for requests to launch an investigation either. Prosecutors launched an investigation after finding out that 4 billion won of the special activity expenses allocated to the NIS had gone into the hands of former President Park.

Key figures in the Park Geun-hye government, such as lawmakers Choi Kyung-hwan and Kim Jae-won and former senior secretary for political affairs Hyun Ki-hwan are being questioned by the prosecutors. Among the "doorknob trio" former secretaries Lee Jae-man and Ahn Bong-geun were also arrested for allegedly receiving "special activity" money from the intelligence service. Former NIS directors Nam Jae-joon and Lee Byung-kee were also arrested.

In addition, state authorities like the Prosecution Service and the National Intelligence Service have simultaneously made their own efforts to root out problematic figures within their organization.

Many of the prosecutors known to be in the "Woo Byung-woo line" have stepped down in the Prosecution Service, and Lee Young-ryeol, former chief of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office and Ahn Tae-geun, former director of the Prosecution Service Bureau at the Ministry of Justice have stepped down after a prosecutors' investigation.

■ Slow Reforms to the System

At a meeting with the leaders of the four ruling and opposition parties in September, President Moon Jae-in said, "Rooting out the long-established irregularities means changing the past structure of unfairness and privileges." At the center of the reforms targeting the system are changes to the Prosecution Service, the police and the National Intelligence Service. The key to reforms in the Prosecution Service is disseminating the excessive authority of the service. Major reforms include the establishment of an investigative agency overseeing criminal activities involving senior public officials and the adjustment of the investigative rights between the police and the prosecutors.

However, such discussions on institutional reforms are going in circles due to two obstacles: a National Assembly with the opposition occupying the majority of the seats and the revised National Assembly Act. This is why institutional reforms have been moving at a snail's pace unlike efforts to root out problematic people. The government and the ruling party presented a timetable claiming to pass the bill for the establishment of the new investigative body during the latest regular session of the National Assembly, but it is impossible due to opposition from the Liberty Korea Party. The ruling party has put this issue as an agenda for the subcommittee of the parliamentary judiciary committee four times, but has failed to take one step forward due to the Liberty Korea Party. There is also no progress in discussions on adjusting the investigative authority between the police and the prosecutors, despite that the government had planned to implement the changes next year.

The intelligence agency recently released the amendments to the National Intelligence Service Korea Act, which stipulates the abolition of its investigative authority to fight communism, but the Liberty Korea Party is arguing that this is the same as giving up on security, thus the outlook on the amendment in the National Assembly is not bright.