South Korean prosecutors flagged a nonexistent legal precedent cited within an official parliamentary indictment against prosecutor Park Sang-yong, raising fresh questions over the use of generative artificial intelligence in legal drafting. According to statements released on August 26, 2026, by officials and the targeted prosecutor himself, the National Assembly’s indictment cited a 2010 Supreme Court ruling that actually involved a labor standards violation rather than witness testimony rules.
The controversy centers on an indictment filed by the National Assembly against Park, an Incheon District Prosecutor’s Office deputy branch head, over allegations that he refused to take a mandatory oath during legislative proceedings. Park is scheduled to appear before the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency’s metropolitan investigation unit on August 27, 2026, for questioning regarding the referral.
Nonexistent Precedent Cited in Parliamentary Indictment
In public statements published to his social media account on August 26, 2026, Park revealed the contents of the parliamentary accusation document. The filing cited Supreme Court ruling 2009do10645, delivered in 2010, to argue that Park’s refusal to swear an oath constituted an illegal act. The text of the indictment claimed the precedent established that a witness’s right to invoke privilege applies only to individual questions asked after taking an oath, and cannot serve as grounds to reject the oath-taking process entirely.
Upon reviewing the citation, prosecutor Gong Bong-suk of the Seoul High Prosecutors’ Office confirmed that the cited case bore no relation to witness oaths or testimony rules. According to Gong, case number 2009do10645 involved an unpaid wages dispute governed by the Labor Standards Act which ultimately ended in an indictment dismissal because the appeal period had lapsed.
“We initially checked while keeping open the possibility that only the case number was entered incorrectly, but we could not find any ruling matching that description,” Gong stated, noting that the text made little legal sense given that Article 3 of the Act on Testimony and Appraisal before the National Assembly explicitly recognizes both the right to refuse an oath and the right to refuse testimony.
Prosecutors Point to Potential AI Hallucination
Addressing the erroneous filing, Gong suggested that the parliamentary official responsible for drafting the documents likely delegated the task to an artificial intelligence tool after failing to find legal backing for the charges. “The AI responded with a hallucination,” Gong said, pointing out a recurring issue where automated legal drafting tools fabricate nonexistent case law.
Park echoed these concerns in his own public remarks, characterizing the inclusion of a fake legal citation as the creation of a false official document. “I do not know if they ran this through an AI, but this amounts to drafting a false official document because the National Assembly’s indictment is an official public record,” Park wrote. He questioned the procedural rigor of the institution, asking how lawmakers could advance major legislative changes like the abolition of supplementary investigation rights given such administrative errors.
As police prepare to question Park on August 27, 2026, the targeted prosecutor noted that if an ordinary citizen had submitted a comparable filing with fabricated legal precedents, the complaint would have been summarily dismissed and the filer investigated for false accusations.