Korea's criminal justice overhaul takes effect, setting deadline for victims' objections

Victims who want to contest a police decision not to refer their case to prosecutors must now file a written objection within three months, under a criminal justice overhaul that took effect Friday.

Under the revised Criminal Procedure Act, led by the ruling Democratic Party, a victim of a case that police decided not to refer to prosecutors must file an objection themselves within three months. Until now, there has been no deadline.

The revised law took effect alongside the launch of the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency and the Public Prosecution Service, which replaced the prosecution system that stood for 78 years. Prosecutors will no longer conduct supplementary investigations themselves, though they can still ask police to do so.

Critics warn that the overhaul will only add to victims' suffering. They point to the risk of shoddy police investigations and cases intentionally buried by the police, weaker judicial checks on the police force, and investigation delays and backlogs, with few measures in place to deal with any of them.

Victims are expected to face higher legal costs first.

After receiving a police decision not to refer a case, a victim must find grounds to rebut it. That means checking for evidence the police failed to secure and for misreadings of the law or the facts, in effect conducting an investigation alone within three months. The victim must then put it all into a written objection and submit it to the police station.

For victims who have suffered physical injury, financial loss or trauma, critics say, the process is close to impossible. Many will have no choice but to pay hefty legal fees for lawyers simply to ask that the police decision be reviewed.

Police's decisions not to refer cases rose from 389,179 in 2021 to 580,774 last year, according to data compiled by the office of Rep. Kim Jae-sub of the main opposition People Power Party (PPP). Objections more than doubled over the same period, from 27,262 to 56,165. Prosecutors' requests for supplementary police investigations rose from 87,173 to 110,623, and indictments that followed those investigations more than doubled, from 528 to 1,130.

"The gates of hell are opening on a collapse of public safety, where rape cannot be established as rape and murder cannot be established as murder," said PPP floor leader Jeong Jeom-sig. 

Lawyers who represent victims say the new deadline will fall hardest on the most vulnerable.

"Filing an objection is hard even for legal experts, so for socially vulnerable people who have been victims of crime to do it on their own is about as difficult as it gets," said Kim Ye-won, head attorney at the Disability Rights Law Center.

"Prosecutors used to check for shoddy police investigations for free. Now victims are being told to do it themselves, with their own money and time, within a limited period."

"Victims have been able to use the objection system because there was no deadline, which let them obtain court orders for documents and gather additional evidence," said head attorney Kim. "With the three-month deadline, we will see more and more victims left helpless against police decisions not to refer their cases."

"The goal of this prosecution reform was simply to bash the prosecution, with no regard at all for protecting victims," said a sitting chief prosecutor who requested anonymity.

"I still do not understand why work that prosecutors, as legal professionals, should be doing is being dumped onto the victims of crimes. Nor do I understand why supplementary investigation powers must be abolished even at the cost of shutting off victims' channels for appeal."

BY JEONG JIN-WOO, JEONG JIN-HO, KIM SEONG-JIN [[email protected]]