Police Raid on the Special Investigation Committee

On 6 June 1949 police raided the office of the Special Committee for the Investigation of Anti-National Acts and hauled away its special police officers. A month later the statute of limitations was shortened and the committee lost its force.

As the committee’s investigations reached senior police officers, the police and the government pushed back hard. On the morning of 6 June 1949, armed police led by the chief of Seoul’s Jung-bu police station raided the committee’s office, detained 35 of its special police officers and carried off weapons and documents. Around the same time, assembly members who served on the committee were arrested in the "National Assembly fraction" case.

In July the National Assembly amended the punishment law to move the statute of limitations up to the end of August 1949, and the committee closed before the year was out. It had investigated 682 cases and indicted 221, but only a handful of people received prison sentences, and they too were released before the Korean War.