Judicial Administrative Advisory Body Discusses Partial Abolition of Official Car Allocation for High Court Chief Judges

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Hyung-min] The 'Judicial Administration Advisory Council,' a body involving external experts in the decision-making process of judicial administration, discussed a plan to partially abolish the allocation of official vehicles to chief judges of high courts.

The Judicial Administration Advisory Council (Chairman Chief Justice Kim Myeong-su) discussed changes to the official vehicle allocation criteria at its 5th meeting held on the 9th in the Supreme Court conference room in Seocho-dong.

At the advisory meeting, it was reported that many opinions favored changing the criteria to not allocate dedicated vehicles to high court chief judges who are solely responsible for judicial duties.

High court chief judges mainly handle judicial work and have little external duties. Accordingly, most of them used official vehicles only for commuting.

Due to these circumstances, there are criticisms that providing high court chief judges with official vehicles and dedicated drivers constitutes excessive privileges. Recently, as part of the prosecution reform, the abolition of official vehicles for prosecutors general has been promoted, and there have been consistent calls within the legal community to reconsider the allocation of official vehicles to high court chief judges as well.

However, the advisory council saw the need to maintain the allocation of dedicated vehicles for certain positions with significant external institutional duties, including heads of courts at various levels.

The timing of the implementation of the revised allocation criteria and compensatory measures upon abolition will be discussed at the next meeting.

As of the 1st of last month, a total of 136 dedicated vehicles were allocated to high court chief judges. Among these, 85 vehicles were provided to judges solely responsible for judicial duties.

Additionally, the advisory council agreed to expand the implementation of the 'separate evidence submission' system for cases where formal trials have been requested or cases referred to trial. The separate evidence submission system requires that only the indictment be submitted at the time of prosecution, with other investigation records or evidence submitted on the trial start date. Until now, this system has been applied only to certain cases, such as those directly investigated by the prosecution.

The advisory council plans to pilot this system in the second half of 2020 and discuss full implementation aligned with the 2021 regular personnel appointments at a later date.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.