Increase in Detected False Accusations and Perjury... No Response Possible if Supplementary Investigative Authority Is Abolished

After Prosecutor-Police Investigative Power Adjustment, False Accusation and Perjury Cases Declined, Then Began to Rise Again
Police Investigations Alone Are Ineffective... Concerns Over Hindrance to Discovering the Substantive Truth

#1. An incident occurred in Busan where a nursing assistant abused a newborn. During the trial, prosecutors discovered discrepancies between the nursing records documented in the CCTV footage and those submitted to the investigative authorities, prompting them to launch an investigation. Hospital staff systematically concealed the crime by falsifying nursing records and destroying a bloodstained baby garment. It was also confirmed that supervisors instructed key witnesses to commit perjury, and recognizing that perjury was committed collectively, prosecutors indicted two people and charged ten others without detention.

#2. At a construction site in Seoul, a worker suffered serious injuries after falling. The defendant, who was indicted as the site manager, claimed during the trial that he was not the site manager and was acquitted. However, based on evidence revealed during the trial, prosecutors uncovered records of payments made in exchange for false testimony, identified the person who actually performed the duties of site manager, and brought charges against that individual.

So-called "judicial order-disrupting crimes," such as false accusations and perjury, sharply declined after the adjustment of investigative powers between prosecutors and police, but are now on the rise again. There are concerns that if the new Prosecution Service, which will be established after the abolition of the Prosecutors' Office next year, is not granted supplementary investigative authority, judicial order-disrupting crimes will become rampant. Crimes such as false accusations and perjury are most often uncovered at the final disposition stage after investigation or during trial proceedings.

According to data obtained by The Asia Business Daily on October 21, the number of people caught for false accusations was 886 in 2019, 707 in 2020, 201 in 2021, 129 in 2022, 276 in 2023, and 290 in 2024. The number of people who committed perjury in court was 589 in 2019, 372 in 2020, 372 in 2021, 495 in 2022, 622 in 2023, and 623 in 2024.

Since the implementation of investigative power adjustments in 2021, prosecutors' authority to directly investigate judicial order-disrupting crimes such as false accusations and perjury was abolished, resulting in a sharp decrease in detected cases. However, after the September 2022 revision of investigation initiation regulations, which included false accusations and perjury as grounds for investigation, the number of detected cases has been gradually increasing.

Currently, prosecutors mainly recognize false accusation crimes through facts revealed at the stage when police either refer a case or issue a non-prosecution disposition, or when records of non-referral are returned. However, the general consensus in the legal community is that police investigations alone are insufficient for an effective response. In the case of referred cases, recognizing false accusations presupposes overturning the police's referral opinion (that there is suspicion). Even if the police are notified of the prosecutor's disposition, it is questionable whether the police would voluntarily initiate investigations into false accusations after thoroughly reviewing the reasons for non-prosecution by borrowing records from the prosecution.

It is also problematic that supplementary investigation requests cannot be made to recognize false accusations. Recognition of false accusations does not fall under the reasons for supplementary investigation requests specified in the Criminal Procedure Act, such as "when deciding on indictment or maintaining prosecution for referred cases."

In non-referral cases, police generally do not recognize false accusations at the time of non-referral submission, considering that the conclusion may change if prosecutors request reinvestigation in the future. After prosecutors return non-referral records, they tend to prioritize investigating existing backlogged cases, leaving little capacity to pursue cases of recognized false accusations, resulting in a passive approach.

For perjury crimes, where the crime scene is the courtroom, it is realistically difficult for police, who are not directly involved in trial proceedings, to quickly and effectively investigate perjury by analyzing trial records, proceedings, and the context and content of testimony.

Both inside and outside the legal community, there are growing concerns that if prosecutors lose the authority to directly investigate false accusations and perjury, such crimes will become widespread, the overall volume of investigations into judicial order-disrupting crimes will decrease, and the discovery of substantive truth will be hindered.

A former deputy chief prosecutor stated, "If supplementary investigative authority disappears, it will be impossible to detect or clarify crimes involving false reports to special judicial police officers. Effective detection of judicial order-disrupting crimes is only possible during the prosecution's investigation and trial stages."

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