Prosecutor's Special Activity Expense Documents: 16,000 Pages Released

A civic group won a lawsuit for information disclosure, resulting in the partial release of the prosecution's special activity expenses and other expenditure records. Special activity expenses refer to costs directly incurred for national affairs such as investigations or intelligence gathering that require confidentiality.

Seoul Seocho-dong Supreme Prosecutors' Office / Photo by Hyunmin Kim kimhyun81@

On the 23rd, Ha Seung-su, co-representative of the civic group 'Catch Tax Thieves,' visited the Supreme Prosecutors' Office and the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office to receive expenditure details and supporting documents for special activity expenses, specific task expenses, and business promotion expenses spent over 33 months since 2017 by the two institutions.

During the disclosure period, the Prosecutors General were Kim Soo-nam, Moon Moo-il, and Yoon Seok-yeol, and the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office chiefs were Lee Young-ryeol, Yoon Seok-yeol, and Bae Seong-beom.

The target materials consist of approximately 16,000 pages, including 9,939 pages from the Supreme Prosecutors' Office and 6,796 pages from the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office. These are known to contain specific dates and amounts of expenditures. Sensitive information such as content, purpose, user names, and the number of attendees at meals or events was excluded.

At a press conference held that day, Representative Ha said, "It has been proven that the prosecution is not a power institution ruling over the people but an ordinary administrative agency that must disclose how taxes are spent and be subject to monitoring and verification."

He added, "The total amount of special activity expenses, specific task expenses, and business promotion expenses used by the Supreme Prosecutors' Office during the relevant period is a little over 46.1 billion won," and stated, "We will verify whether there was any illegal or improper use of special activity expenses." The materials will be scanned, digitized, and made publicly available.

Earlier, Representative Ha had requested information disclosure of the expenditure details and supporting documents for special activity expenses at the Supreme Prosecutors' Office and Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office. However, after being notified of 'refusal to disclose' except for business promotion expenses, he filed a lawsuit in November 2019.

The first trial ruled to disclose all expenditure records of special activity expenses from the Supreme Prosecutors' Office and partially disclose the expenditure records of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office.

The second trial also ruled in favor of Representative Ha. However, it modified the scope of disclosure and dismissed some of Ha's requests for information. The Supreme Court also upheld this judgment as correct.

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