Criminal Procedure Act gets more complex as lawmakers move to abolish supplementary investigation authority... "The work will be paralyzed at this rate"

[Financial News] As revisions to the Criminal Procedure Act of the Republic of Korea, centered on abolishing prosecutors' supplementary investigation authority, enter the final stretch, lawmakers are introducing a stream of bills that include "alternatives" to replace the prosecutors' investigative oversight function. But legal experts warn that these measures are closer to desk-bound theorizing than to the realities of investigations, and could instead paralyze the criminal justice system.
According to the National Assembly Bill Information System on the 28th, 18 partial revision bills to the Criminal Procedure Act of the Republic of Korea had been introduced by that day after Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) lawmakers Kim Yong-min and Park Eun-jung each submitted their own proposals.
The DPK decided at a general caucus meeting on the 24th to make the abolition of prosecutors' supplementary investigation authority a party line. However, since eliminating that authority raises concerns about abuse of investigative powers by judicial police officers, including police officers under the National Police Agency's National Office of Investigation, lawmakers are offering different ways to keep them in check.
A revision bill introduced on the 22nd by DPK lawmaker Kim Seung-won, chair of the First Bill Review Subcommittee of the Legislation and Judiciary Committee, includes an "alternative" that would record and log the entire investigative process in the Korea Information System of Criminal Justice Services (KICS).
Article 244-7, newly added under the bill, would require judicial police officers to video-record the entire process from start to finish when carrying out searches, seizures or inspections of another person's residence or other premises for arrest or detention, and to upload the footage to KICS without delay. Body cams are also included as a recording method. If a suspect or lawyer requests it, recording would also be mandatory for other searches and seizures.
Article 244-6 of the same bill goes even further. It would require logging the date, time and location of meetings with people involved in a case, the content of conversations, a list of evidence collected and how it was obtained, as well as sentencing materials under Article 51 of the Criminal Act. The affiliation, position and name of the superior who directed or approved the investigation would also have to be recorded. Failure to log the information without just cause, or entering false information, would be treated as a violation of official duty, and if discovered in a routine inspection, it would trigger a request for disciplinary action.
A separate bill introduced on the 20th by DPK lawmaker Seo Young-kyo contains a different kind of control mechanism. It grants complainants who seek to challenge a decision not to send a case to prosecutors the right to request access to and copies of investigative records to the extent necessary. It also adds Article 245-11, which in principle requires investigative agencies to approve such requests from complainants or victims. Although the scope of access is limited to records related to victims and others, the bill does not define that boundary in detail. In effect, it would allow people other than judicial police officers and prosecutors to review investigative records even before a case is concluded.
Legal experts say these alternatives would weaken the speed and flexibility of investigations. Kim's bill assumes that judicial police officers would have to leave a full record even when responding to urgent situations such as emergency arrests, but critics question whether that is realistic in unpredictable field operations.
A lawyer who previously served as Head of the Investigation Division at a Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency precinct called the proposal "too idealistic." He said, "It might be possible if the government invested heavily, for example by issuing high-performance body cams to every officer and automatically uploading recordings to KICS. But that seems unrealistic. In the end, officers would have to return from the field and manually document evidence one by one. Even during the 2021 adjustment of investigative powers, police manpower and budgets remained unchanged, and only the workload was transferred to them, eventually leading to overload."
Critics of Seo's bill say it would destroy the secrecy of investigations. If records are opened to people involved in a case while the investigation is still under way, it could lead to accomplices fleeing or evidence being destroyed. It could also be misused as a way for complainants or accusers to monitor the other side's investigative status. A junior prosecutor working in the Seoul metropolitan area said, "If these so-called alternatives are implemented, the criminal justice system will collapse."
One legal source said, "Because they are trying to remove the conditions that preserve prosecutors' investigative control functions, such as supplementary investigation authority or investigative command authority, we are seeing patchwork measures designed to prevent individual side effects. Institutions should be simple and clear so that ordinary citizens without background knowledge of the criminal justice system do not suffer. If things become this complicated, ordinary people will have no choice but to rely on legal advice, and the people who ultimately benefit will be criminal defense lawyers."

[email protected] Kim Dong-gyu Reporter