The Democratic Party of Korea is pushing to abolish prosecutors' "supplementary investigation authority" as part of prosecutorial reform. The party says that if the authority remains, the core of reform — the separation of investigation and indictment — cannot be properly achieved. In contrast, President Lee Jae-myung and Justice Minister Jeong Seong-ho have expressed opposition to abolishing the authority. On the 13th, the legal community noted that abolishing supplementary investigation authority would make it harder to resolve crimes that infringe on people's livelihoods.
At a news conference marking 100 days in office on the 11th, the president, responding to a question about prosecutorial reform, said, "The original discussion was to apply internal controls to separate investigating prosecutors and indicting prosecutors within the prosecution, but now it's moving toward saying prosecutors should not touch investigations at all or even take interest," adding, "If you hate maggots, does it make sense to throw away the entire crock?" The idea is to prevent abuse of prosecutorial power by separating investigation and indictment, but to be cautious about abolishing supplementary investigation authority. Minister Jeong Seong-ho also recently said, "We absolutely need institutional safeguards to supplement the police's shoddy or lenient investigations," repeatedly signaling support for maintaining the authority.
Supplementary investigation authority is the power for a prosecutor to directly investigate areas lacking in a case sent by the police or to request additional investigation from the police. After the 2022 enforcement of the "complete deprivation of prosecutorial investigative powers" law, prosecutors were restricted from conducting direct investigations and were left only with the power to request supplementary investigations from the police. Then, with the 2023 revision of investigation rules, prosecutors' direct supplementary investigation authority was revived. The Democratic Party argues that this "direct supplementary investigation authority" should be abolished again. For a "complete separation of investigation and indictment," no investigative authority should be granted to the Public Prosecution Office.
However, the legal community says that "completely abolishing prosecutors' supplementary investigation authority could worsen investigation delays and shoddy investigations." The Young Lawyers for a New Future (Saebyun), a young lawyers' group, said, "If prosecutors are barred from conducting even the supplementary investigations that are absolutely necessary before indictment, the quality of indictments will fall and maintaining charges in trial will become weaker," adding, "If we cannot properly control the risks of the police's overreaching or shoddy investigations, it will inevitably affect court proceedings as well."
As an example, Saebyun cited the "Busan roundhouse kick case" that occurred in 2022. In the early stage, police sent the case applying only the simple charge of "causing serious injury," but after prosecutors conducted a supplementary investigation, they changed the suspect's charge to "attempted rape and murder" and indicted. In 2023, the Supreme Court finalized a 20-year prison sentence for the perpetrator.
The "Gapyeong valley murder case" that occurred in 2019 is cited as a similar example. In the case, the perpetrator, Lee Eun-hae, conspired with her boyfriend to kill her husband by disguising it as a swimming accident in a valley to collect insurance money. In the early stage, the local police station closed the case as a simple accident during a preliminary inquiry. Even after the bereaved family's acquaintance requested a reinvestigation, the police sent the case on suspicion of attempted insurance fraud, but prosecutors conducted a full reinvestigation, additionally confirming attempted murder charges and sending the case to trial. In 2023, Lee Eun-hae's life sentence was finalized.
In the case of the "three women's jeonse scam," in which 355 villa tenants were defrauded of 79.5 billion won in jeonse deposits, the police initially sent the three women without detention only for 51 victims, but through the prosecution's supplementary investigation, it was found that a sales agency collaborated and additional victims were identified. The main culprit, a person surnamed Kim, was given a finalized 15-year prison sentence in Jun.
An attorney who previously served as a chief judge said, "There is no guarantee that cases like the 'valley murder case' or the 'Busan roundhouse kick case' won't happen again, and if supplementary investigations are abolished and such livelihood-infringing cases cannot be properly investigated, the harm will be borne entirely by ordinary citizens."