Ministry of Justice Accelerates Prosecution Restructuring... Focus on Breakthrough for 'Geomsu Wanbak'

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Hyung-min] As the Ministry of Justice has begun full-scale reform of the prosecution organization, attention is focused on whether the prosecution, whose investigative functions have been weakened up to the phase of Geomsu Wanbak (complete removal of prosecution’s investigative authority), can find a breakthrough.

According to the legal community on the 13th, the Ministry of Justice recently sent an official document containing the prosecution organization reform plan to prosecution offices nationwide and requested their opinions.

According to the plan, the Ministry of Justice has set a plan to revise the division of duties so that all criminal divisions of frontline prosecution offices that discover clues to major crimes can immediately start investigations. It is analyzed that this opens the way for investigations to proceed as before upon case acceptance without the approval of the Prosecutor General.

Measures such as deleting some provisions of the "Regulations on the Organization and Operation of the Prosecution Office," which left room for the Minister of Justice’s intervention in the composition and operation of investigation teams, and restoring the functions and department names of former specialized departments that have been renamed as "criminal divisions" in recent years have also drawn attention.

In the legal community, there is speculation that the Ministry of Justice’s organizational reform plan this time is a way to revitalize the prosecution’s functions without amending current laws through the National Assembly, and that the new government may proceed with revising presidential decrees related to the prosecution.

The Ministry of Justice can immediately revise the "Regulations on the Scope of Crimes for Prosecutors’ Investigation Initiation," which defines the scope of direct investigation. It is also known that the Ministry believes that the specialized investigative departments, which will regain their names through the organizational reform, can conduct investigations even within the framework of the Geomsu Wanbak law. For example, customs or tax crimes, fraud using advanced technology, pharmaceutical rebates, drug import/export, and industrial technology leakage all fall under "corruption and economic crimes" that can be investigated. Corruption and economic crimes can still be directly investigated by the prosecution after the enforcement of the Geomsu Wanbak law.

Furthermore, if the investigation initiation regulations, which have narrowed the scope to 11 corruption crimes and 17 economic crimes, are revised to remove restrictions such as crime amount, the scope of possible investigations could expand without legal amendments, according to some analyses.

Minister Han Dong-hoon responded to the question of whether the prosecution organization reform plan contradicts the legislative intent of Geomsu Wanbak by saying, "I do not think so," and added, "The legislative intent is to enable the prosecution to work properly, and it is the duty of the Minister of Justice to create administrative regulations such as presidential decrees and Ministry of Justice ordinances to support this."

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