Minister Jung Sung-ho of the Ministry of Justice said on the 15th that "when prosecutors' supplementary investigation authority is abolished, full-case referral is needed as a means to control the police." Full-case referral is a system in which the police send every case they investigate to prosecutors so a prosecutor can review it again. It was abolished in 2021, under the Moon Jae-in administration, when the adjustment of investigative authority between the prosecution and police granted the police the "primary authority to close investigations."
Minister Jung attended the full session of The National Assembly's Legislation and Judiciary Committee that day and answered this way when asked by Park Eun-jung, a Rebuilding Korea Party lawmaker, "What is your position on full-case referral?" When Park asked, "Is that the Ministry of Justice's official position?" Minister Jung said, "Nothing has been officially decided." When Park asked, "If the Minister says it, it becomes the official position, right?" Minister Jung answered, "Yes."
Park said regarding the abolition of the full-case referral system under the Moon Jae-in administration, "Even when prosecutors reviewed cases subject to full-case referral, less than 1% of decision letters were changed," adding, "The intent was that it is right to free victims quickly from an unstable status and to conclude investigations."
Park also said, "Even now, under the Criminal Procedure Act, the case records and evidence all go to prosecutors even if a case is not sent for indictment, and over 90 days they review them and request reinvestigation in about 2% of cases," adding, "Among those, about 0.73% see the decision changed."
Park argued, "For the Ministry of Justice to now speak of reviving full-case referral appears to signal an intention to intervene in selective and political investigations."
In response, the Minister said, "How many cases involve prosecutors or are political cases?" adding, "The cases that are truly problematic are sex crimes with women as victims, child abuse, elder abuse, abuse of persons with disabilities, and economic crimes targeting the socially vulnerable. Among hundreds of thousands of cases, 1% to 2% amounts to several thousand."
The Minister continued, "Isn't the reason for the prosecution system's existence to prevent that 1% of unjust cases?" adding, "Look closely at how the current investigative structure actually operates."
The Minister said, "Through legislation in the National Assembly, prosecutors' authority to initiate investigations has already been stripped. Supplementary investigations merely supplement cases investigated by the primary investigative body," adding, "If the authority to conduct supplementary investigations is taken away, we are calling for institutional safeguards so that victims' rights are fully protected and the basic human rights of the public are thoroughly protected in that process."
The Minister said, "I hope lawmakers will view the investigative reality in a cool-headed and objective manner."