Prosecutor retirements exceed 100 for fifth straight year; 110 through September

[Financial News] This year, too, more than 100 prosecutors retired as the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office of the Republic of Korea (SPO) was abolished and the system shifted to the Public Prosecution Office. Prosecutor retirements have remained in the triple digits for five consecutive years since 2022.
According to the Ministry of Justice on the 13th, a total of 110 prosecutors retired from January through the end of September this year.
The annual number of prosecutor retirements rose sharply from 75 in 2018 to 111 in 2019, ahead of the adjustment of investigative powers between prosecutors and police. It then fell back to double digits, with 94 in 2020 and 79 in 2021, before surging to 146 in 2022.
The number remained above 100 in 2023, at 145, and in 2024, at 132. Last year, 175 prosecutors left the SPO, the highest number of departures in nine years. With 110 already retired by September this year, the total will remain in the 100s for a fifth consecutive year.
This year’s figure is believed to have been affected by the sizable number of prosecutors who left the SPO as the abolition of the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office and the launch of the Public Prosecution Office and Serious Crimes Investigation Agency approached. Among those named in August as slated for appointment as career judges were as many as 32 prosecutors.
The 110 prosecutors who retired this year amount to about 4.8% of the 2,292 posts authorized under the current law on prosecutor staffing. Compared with the actual headcount of 2,129 prosecutors as of August, they represent about 5.2%. In effect, before the year was even over, the number of departures was equivalent to about half of the roughly 200 prosecutors at the Seoul Central District Public Prosecution Office, the largest in the country.
Meanwhile, on the 12th, the previous day, the Ministry of Justice issued transfer orders for 105 newly appointed prosecutors. This was the first personnel assignment of new prosecutors since the abolition of the SPO and the launch of the Public Prosecution Office.
The new prosecutors assigned to frontline offices this time included lawyers from the 12th Korean Bar Examination cohort who had served as military legal officers, as well as those from the 15th cohort, among others.
Attention is focused on whether the new prosecutors will help ease the case backlog, which has grown sharply in recent months. As of the end of September, prosecutors’ offices nationwide had a total of 186,307 pending cases. The figure rose from 140,513 at the end of June to 165,020 at the end of July, then stood at 164,822 at the end of August before surging by at least 20,000 again during September alone.
[email protected] Choi Eun-sol Reporter