Women's groups expressed regret over the National Assembly's passage of a Criminal Procedure Act amendment abolishing prosecutors' supplementary investigation authority, saying "prosecution reform has effectively been carried out without victims."
The Korea Sexual Violence Relief Center, the Women's Human Rights Committee of Lawyers for a Democratic Society, Women with Disabilities Empathy, Korean Women's Association United, and Korea Women's Hotline issued a joint statement on the 31st, saying the ruling party pushed through the Criminal Procedure Act amendment "without reflecting the demands of women victims of violence and victim support organizations."
The groups said that because the amendment places mechanisms to effectively check investigative agencies not in the Criminal Procedure Act but in separate, offense-specific laws, some victims could be left out of protections.
They added that "the burden of individually contesting investigative procedural defects, such as shoddy investigations, has been shifted to victims," and criticized that "measures to guarantee rights, including notification of investigation progress, hearing victims' opinions before nonindictment, and the victim participation system at the trial stage, were not reflected."
The groups said that after investigative authority was reallocated between the police and the prosecution in 2021, cases not sent to prosecutors rose from 370,000 to 600,000 in 2025, but objections amounted to only 9% of all non-referral cases.
They added, "We cannot help but worry about how much the Public Prosecution Office's authority to demand supplementary investigations, corrective measures, and reinvestigations will fill investigative gaps and lead to uncovering the substantive truth of crimes."
The groups said, "Victims must endure investigation delays as they go back and forth among the police, the Public Prosecution Office, and the Serious Crime Investigation Office," arguing that "prosecution reform has degenerated into political strife over wins and losses rather than the completeness of the system."