Bamboo has long been a symbol of uprightness. Because it keeps its green leaves through all four seasons and grows straight upward, it was counted among the Four Gracious Plants alongside the plum blossom, orchid and chrysanthemum. Yun Seon-do, the Joseon-era poet known by his pen name Gosan, praised bamboo's straightness and emptiness in his poem "Song of Five Friends": "Neither a tree nor a grass — who told you to stand so straight, and why is your inside hollow?" In bamboo, he found the spirit of a scholar unshaken by power or the trends of the times.
The prosecution service adopted that same uprightness as the symbol of its organization. In 2004, under the Roh Moo-hyun administration, the Supreme Prosecutors' Office created an emblem shaped like bamboo, replacing the rose of Sharon that had served as the prosecution's logo since the founding of the government. The five blue pillars in the new image stood for fairness, truth, justice, human rights and integrity. A sword was worked into the straight line at the center and a set of scales into the curve above it. The color blue was meant to convey rationality and reason.
As it happened, 2004 — the year the prosecution's bamboo appeared — was also a pivotal year in the history of dividing investigative authority between prosecutors and police. That September, a consultative body on adjusting investigative powers between the two held its first meeting, opening a long debate over how the prosecution's core powers should be split. In 2009, the English name of the organization changed. It had previously been rendered as "Prosecutors' Office," a term denoting the institution itself, but from then on "Prosecution Service" was used. The aim was to emphasize the prosecution's functions and services, such as investigation and indictment, and to highlight it as an organization serving the public.
On the 28th, prosecutors' offices across the country began taking down their signs. With the launch of the Public Prosecution Office and the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency set for Oct. 2, the name and symbols of the prosecution service are passing into history. The two new bodies plan to use the government's taegeuk (yin-yang symbol) emblem until new logos are created. Yet the uprightness that scholars of old found in bamboo is not a value that disappears when a sign is removed. The prosecution's bamboo is coming down after 22 years, but the values inscribed in its five stalks should remain intact in the organizations now taking its place.
