Last Year, Over 8,000 Increase in Reconsideration Requests, Surpassing 30,000... Number of Approvals Decreased Instead

[Asia Economy Reporter Choi Seok-jin] The number of judicial review requests, in which complainants or accusers who are dissatisfied with the prosecution's decision not to indict apply to the High Court to determine the appropriateness of the non-indictment decision, exceeded 30,000 last year.

However, it was confirmed that the number of cases in which the court judged the application to be valid and decided to prosecute actually decreased.

According to the '2020 Judicial Yearbook' published by the court on the 7th, the number of judicial review requests received last year was 32,977, which is 8,790 more than the previous year (24,187).

This is an increase of 36.3% compared to the previous year, marking the largest rise in 11 years since 2008, when the scope of crimes subject to judicial review requests was expanded to include all complaint cases, resulting in an increase of more than 10,000 cases compared to the previous year.

By charge, cases related to public officials' duties were the most numerous at 11,175, followed by fraud and extortion (5,578), and document-related cases such as forgery and alteration (2,169).

While the number of judicial review requests increased significantly, the number of cases in which the court judged the request to be 'valid' and decided to prosecute was 107, down 8 from 115 the previous year.

The number of prosecutions initiated by the court for judicial review cases has been steadily decreasing since 2011.

In response to criticism regarding the low prosecution rate of judicial review requests, the Seoul High Court established and is operating a dedicated panel for judicial review cases earlier this year.

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