Park Chan-woon, Chairperson of the advisory committee under the prime minister's task force for prosecution reform, resigned from the chair on the 9th after expressing the view that the prosecutor's supplementary investigation authority should not be abolished. Park, formerly of MINBYUN-Lawyers for a Democratic Society, is currently a professor at Hanyang University School of Law.
The prosecution reform task force said, "Chairperson Park today expressed an intention to resign to (Yoon Chang-ryeol), the head of the task force, and the task force decided to accept it."
Explaining the reason for the resignation, the former Chairperson Park said, "I am someone who has opposed abolishing supplementary investigations and has strongly argued for the need for full case transfer," adding, "I judged that taking on an advisory role in the Criminal Procedure Act revision work could be a burden on the task force."
Full case transfer refers to sending all cases investigated by first-line investigative bodies such as the police to the prosecution. Under the adjustment of investigative authority between the police and prosecution in 2020 during the Moon Jae-in administration, the police were granted primary authority to close investigations. If the police currently determine that there is no suspicion as a result of an investigation, they can close the case on their own without sending it to the prosecution.
The former Chairperson Park said, "(The resignation) is due to concerns about the current structure of debate surrounding the supplementary investigation authority," adding, "Even though this is a matter that would bring significant changes to our criminal justice procedure, I take seriously the reality in which emotional approaches are preceding sufficient deliberation and balanced debate."
The prosecution reform task force has prepared the government drafts of the Serious Crime Investigation Agency Act and the Public Prosecution Office Act. It is now discussing revisions to the Criminal Act, including whether to grant prosecutors of the Public Prosecution Office the authority to conduct supplementary investigations or only the authority to request supplementary investigations.
In a Facebook post on the morning of the same day, the former Chairperson Park also said, "The argument to completely abolish (the supplementary investigation authority) carries a high risk of pushing our criminal justice procedure into confusion that would be hard to endure."
The Democratic Party of Korea holds the view that prosecutors of the Public Prosecution Office should not be given the authority to conduct supplementary investigations and should be given only the authority to request supplementary investigations. In a public opinion survey conducted by the task force, 45.4% of respondents said prosecutors of the Public Prosecution Office should have the authority to conduct supplementary investigations directly or in a limited manner. Those who said they should not have the authority to conduct supplementary investigations accounted for 34.2%.