[Seocho-dong Legal Talk] Lawyer "Can't review documents due to system failure," Judge "We can't see them either"

Disruption in Civil Trials Nationwide Due to Court Electronic Litigation System Error

Plaintiff's lawyer: The (court) system is currently down, so we were unable to review the appellant's brief submitted by the defendant on the 28th of last month.
Presiding judge: We also couldn't access the system, so we came in without seeing it.

On the 2nd, this was the conversation between the presiding judge and the plaintiff's lawyer in a civil trial courtroom on the 5th floor of the Seoul High Court. Judging that it was no longer possible to proceed with the trial, the presiding judge suggested rescheduling the hearing to the end of this month. The plaintiff's lawyer appealed, saying, "It seems the defendant is making new claims, but due to the system error, we have 'completely' been unable to verify the related information." Ultimately, the presiding judge decided to postpone the hearing by about a month and hold it next month.

As the court's electronic litigation system overhaul was delayed, major confusion ensued, with parties involved in cases unable to verify key details of their cases.

Currently, all civil cases in South Korea are conducted electronically, but on this day, system errors caused numerous situations where trials were effectively impossible. The 'My Case Search' system, which allows parties to search their case information, was also unavailable, displaying a "System Maintenance Notice" message.

Supreme Court, Seocho-gu, Seoul.

Originally, the Court Administration planned to perform maintenance on the court's IT system from 8 PM on the 28th of last month until 4 AM on this day. The work was carried out with trial operations and the electronic litigation system suspended to ensure safety and accuracy. This was to transfer over 700 million records to a newly established database in line with the opening of the Suwon Rehabilitation Court and Busan Rehabilitation Court on the 1st.

However, due to system errors and the massive volume of data, the work could not be completed within the scheduled time. As a result, the nationwide court website's case search function did not operate properly. Submission and viewing of records by trial parties, as well as schedule checks, were effectively impossible.

On this day, the Supreme Court's Court Administration Office issued a notice under the name of Director Kim Sang-hwan, stating, "It has become difficult to use trial operations and the electronic litigation system normally today."

The Court Administration explained, "We have temporarily stopped the data transfer and restarted trial operations and the electronic litigation system, but the process of adding indexes to the data is delayed." They added, "We deeply apologize for the great inconvenience caused to the public using the system."

However, contrary to the Court Administration's explanation that the system would be restored from 1 PM that day, as of 4 PM, systems such as My Case Search remain unavailable.

Electronic litigation was fully introduced to civil trials starting in 2011 to reduce simple and repetitive tasks based on paper records and to guarantee procedural rights of the parties. The Court Administration has been refining related systems to realize the digitization of judicial procedures. Criminal cases are also expected to transition to paperless electronic litigation starting in 2024.