With 100 days left until the launch of the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency and the Prosecution Service, voices of concern have emerged among legal experts about side effects from the mechanical separation of investigation and indictment. Concerns were also raised that the government's formal move to fully abolish prosecutors' supplementary investigation authority could harm ordinary people.
The Judicial Research and Training Institute and the Korea Institute of Criminal Justice Policy (KICJP) held a criminal justice forum on the 25th in Yangjae-dong, Seoul. This year's event was held under the theme "In an era of great change, the direction of criminal justice."
At the forum, concerns were raised about the independence of the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency, which launches in Oct., and the ambiguity of its investigative scope.
Park Kyung-gyu, Deputy Minister and head of the Criminal Law System Research Bureau at the Korea Institute of Criminal Justice Policy, said the guarantee of independence for the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency's investigative duties is weak. Park said, "Under the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency Act, the Minister of the Interior and Safety is the performance evaluator for the agency's staff, and a majority of the commissioners on the committee that recommends candidates for the agency's chief could be people under the influence of the Ministry of the Interior and Safety (MOIS)," adding, "In effect, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety supervises and directs investigators via the agency's chief."
Cha Jin-a, a professor at Korea University Law School, pointed to overlapping investigative authority among the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency and the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO). Cha said, "The criteria and procedures for coordinating investigative authority among agencies are unclear or insufficient, and rather than mutual cooperation, wasteful competition among them raises serious concerns about procedural confusion, delays, and human rights violations." Lee Chang-hyun, a professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Law School, said, "The biggest problem with a proliferation of investigative bodies is the 'dark burial' of cases that occurs as they pass cases off to one another."
Attorney Yang Hong-seok, a former member of the advisory committee of the Prosecution Reform Promotion Team, said the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency would have to devote considerable administrative resources just to review requests to transfer jurisdictional cases. It is estimated that other investigative agencies, aside from the agency, will have to notify about 300,000 serious crime cases annually; divided by working days (250 days), that amounts to an average of 1,200 cases per day. Yang said, "Given the number of cases, I doubt whether it will be possible to screen which cases are appropriate for the agency to investigate."
There were also varied views on abolishing prosecutors' supplementary investigation authority. Han Sang-hee, a professor at Konkuk University Law School, said a fundamental question is needed about who will actually suffer harm from the abolition. Han said, "The victims of the abuse of supplementary investigation authority are those in power, while those likely to be harmed by its abolition are ordinary people," adding, "You should not eliminate medicine to solve the problem of drug misuse. This kind of approach is not desirable."
Jang Jun-ho, head of the Gangneung Branch of the Chuncheon District Prosecutors' Office, raised the issue of supplementing evidence in cases sent by police. Jang said, "Because prosecutors bear the responsibility to prove the charges to the extent of excluding reasonable doubt before judges, the level of evidence required for indictment is inevitably high," adding, "From the police perspective, they may view prosecutors as demanding excessive proof and effectively refuse requests for supplementary investigation." He added, "In the end, non-indictment decisions without sufficient investigation will occur more frequently between prosecutors and police."
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Kim Min-seok held a briefing on pending issues related to prosecution reform that day and said, "We have finalized as the government's basic position the full abolition of prosecutors' supplementary investigation authority." Kim also said, "It is desirable for the National Assembly, the representative body of the people, to decide after sufficient discussion and deliberation on the specific institutional design and legislation."