The Supreme Prosecutors' Office said on the 19th that it selected prosecutor Ryu Jae-hyeon (4th bar exam) of the Gwangju District Prosecutors' Office and Son Hye-eum, an assistant prosecution officer at the Busan District Prosecutors' Office, as the top public interest representative prosecutor and investigator, respectively, for the first half of this year. This is the first time prosecutors have selected top public interest representative winners for both a prosecutor and an investigator.
Public interest representation work refers to the area in which prosecutors exercise authority as representatives of the public interest under individual laws such as the Civil Act and the Commercial Act, beyond criminal investigations and indictments.
According to the Supreme Prosecutors' Office that day, Prosecutor Ryu, affiliated with the Human Rights Protection Division of the Gwangju District Prosecutors' Office and serving as Head of Team of the public interest litigation task force, filed a total of 15 dissolution orders for shell companies created for criminal purposes and handled various public interest representation tasks, including petitions to terminate parental rights and appoint a minor guardian for a child in urgent need of surgery.
Assistant officer Son, a member of the noncontentious case task force of the Human Rights Protection Division at the Busan District Prosecutors' Office, has been exclusively handling public interest representation work since January last year. By analyzing criminal case judgments, Son filed a total of 38 dissolution orders for shell companies established for criminal purposes and, at the request of a child welfare facility, also filed the first-ever petitions for birth registration and a name change for a child whose resident registration had been deleted.
The Supreme Prosecutors' Office also selected outstanding public interest representation cases for the second quarter of this year. The Jeongeup Branch of the Jeonju District Prosecutors' Office, in a case where a relative of a victim with level 1 intellectual disability embezzled insurance money and arbitrarily acquired real estate, recommended that a local disability support group apply to be designated as the complainant, enabling an investigation to begin. The Jinju Branch of the Changwon District Prosecutors' Office swiftly handled a money laundering case worth 9.6 billion won just before the statute of limitations expired, sent 19 suspects to trial, and filed dissolution orders for 29 shell companies used in the crimes.
Prosecutors have recently been accelerating the systematization of public interest representation work. In April this year, they established an internal directive titled "Guidelines for Handling Public Interest Representation Work" and added "public interest representation" to the certified specialist prosecutor categories. A prosecution official said, "The importance of public interest representation work, in which prosecutors go beyond handling criminal cases and actively carry out functions prescribed in the Civil and Commercial Acts, is growing."