Supreme Prosecutors’ Office to Revise Guidelines to Bar Investigating Prosecutors from Citizen Participation Trials

Concerns Raised Over Potential Difficulties in Maintaining Prosecutions

It is expected that, going forward, prosecutors in charge of investigations will no longer be able to participate in citizen participation trials.

Reference image. Yonhap News Agency

According to the legal community on September 16, the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office has begun revising the “Guidelines on the Prosecution of Citizen Participation Trials.” These guidelines currently provide the legal basis for allowing prosecutors who have been transferred due to personnel changes to participate in citizen participation trials through temporary assignments.

Under the current guidelines, even if an investigating prosecutor is transferred, they are required to handle the case directly if they move to a nearby office within the jurisdiction of the same high prosecutors’ office or if it is deemed necessary for them to conduct the prosecution themselves. The planned revision aims to prohibit investigating prosecutors from participating in maintaining the prosecution.

This measure is a follow-up to the order by Minister of Justice Jung Sungho to have acting prosecutors return to their original posts. Previously, upon taking office on July 21, Minister Jung instructed a review of returning prosecutors-who had been involved in maintaining prosecutions for cases at other prosecutors’ offices in an acting capacity-to their original positions.

Amid controversy that this directive conflicted with internal prosecutorial regulations, the guidelines are now being revised to align with the minister’s instructions.

Previously, Seo Hyunwook, a prosecutor at the Changwon branch of the Busan High Prosecutors’ Office (Judicial Research and Training Institute, Class 35), who was in charge of investigating and indicting the “split donations” allegations against former Gyeonggi Province Peace Vice Governor Lee Hwayoung and a perjury case at the National Assembly, posted on the internal prosecutors’ network, Epros, stating, “There is an internal regulation that requires investigating prosecutors to participate in trials even after leaving the investigation team for citizen participation trials,” and requested reconsideration of the ban on acting assignments.

As a result, concerns have been raised that if investigating prosecutors are unable to participate in trials, it may become difficult to maintain prosecutions. Gong Bongsook, a prosecutor at the Seoul High Prosecutors’ Office (Class 32), commented, “I would like to ask whether, no matter how complex or difficult a case is, the intention is for trial prosecutors to handle everything on their own, and if an acquittal is delivered, there is simply no other choice.”