New investigative agency set to launch amid staffing and equipment shortages
A Cheong Wa Dae spokesperson said Tuesday that President Lee Jae Myung nominated lawyer Kim Ji-yong to be the first head of the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency, which is scheduled to launch alongside the Prosecution Service on Oct. 2.
Kim is a former chief of the Criminal Affairs Department at the Supreme Prosecutors' Office and will lead the agency for two years following a confirmation hearing.
A revision to the Criminal Procedure Act pushed through by the Democratic Party of Korea and promulgated by the Lee administration transferred the country’s core investigative functions to the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency. The Prosecution Service will handle prosecutions exclusively 78 years after it was founded.
The Lee administration, which dismantled the prosecution through unilateral party legislation despite much concern and opposition, is now appointing a former prosecutor to head the agency, revealing the contradiction of having no choice but to acknowledge the prosecution's investigative capabilities.
Moreover, Kim had opposed the abolition of prosecutors' supplementary investigative authority.
In 2022, while serving at the Supreme Prosecutors' Office, Kim said that in 30.5 percent of cases in which prosecutors requested supplementary investigations after police were granted authority to close cases themselves, it had taken police more than three months to conduct the supplementary investigations. He expressed concern that if prosecutors' authority to demand supplementary investigations were abolished, the public would bear the full brunt of harm caused by delays in processing cases.
We cannot help but ask the fundamental question: Why on earth abolish the prosecution as an institution?
The issue of “political prosecutors,” whom the party accused of conducting investigations against it, could have been resolved by establishing a system to correct their behavior. Instead, by eliminating the prosecution as an institution altogether, the party has left the public with no choice but to bear enormous costs and suffer under the new criminal justice system in the years ahead.
To make matters worse, hardly any aspect of the operations of the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency — from staffing and equipment to organizational structure — can be said to be properly prepared, with just three weeks to go before its launch.
The most urgent priority is to secure enough investigators. More than 1,100 positions — 40 percent of its total authorized workforce of 2,874 — remain vacant. According to the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, 615 of the 2,376 prosecutors and prosecution investigators who applied for positions at the agency have withdrawn their applications.
The launch preparation task force says it will recruit additional personnel from among police officers, lawyers, accountants and patent attorneys, but a major staffing shortfall has already emerged.
Essential computer and communications equipment for investigations is also not expected to be delivered or fully installed until December.
The nation’s central investigative agency is set to get off the ground without even having its systems properly in place. Nonetheless, the agency is expected to handle 20,000 to 30,000 cases a year. Moreover, from the moment it opens its doors, it will have to handle specialized investigations that require a high degree of expertise.
If cases pile up while there is a shortage of experienced personnel and essential equipment is not fully in place, the agency could be overwhelmed, and its operations could grind to a halt. In the process, many criminals could slip through the legal net, with the public ultimately bearing the cost.
This is the fault of the Democratic Party and the Lee administration, which, blinded by the dogma of completely stripping prosecutors of their investigative authority, pushed ahead with dismantling the prosecution without making adequate preparations for the fallout.
They will have to take responsibility.
khnews@heraldcorp.com
