The Ministry of Justice has decided to launch the new Public Prosecution Service with fewer prosecutors than originally planned. The agency will begin operations on Oct. 2 with 80% to 85% of the current authorized number of prosecutors, and the ministry plans to cut the statutory ceiling itself later. Critics say the ministry rushed to shrink the organization under pressure from hardliners in the ruling party without fully weighing the workload and case delays that will come in the early months.
According to reporting by The Seoul Economic Daily on the 23rd, the Cabinet approved revised versions of the decree on the Public Prosecution Service and its affiliated agencies and the enforcement decree of the Prosecutors' Quota Act at a meeting the previous day. Lee Eung-cheol, head of the ministry's prosecution bureau, told a briefing at the Government Complex in Gwacheon that the service would launch with 80% to 85% of the ceiling set by the current Prosecutors' Quota Act, excluding routine vacancies and prosecutors seconded to the courts.
The current ceiling is 2,292 prosecutors, which puts the launch-day figure at roughly 1,834 to 1,948. The ministry also plans to lower the statutory ceiling itself. Early next year it will commission an outside body to analyze the service's workload and assess its structure to calculate an appropriate number of prosecutors, then consult the Ministry of the Interior and Safety and the National Assembly before seeking an amendment to the Prosecutors' Quota Act at next year's regular parliamentary session.
Prosecutors will be redeployed to strengthen trial work. The plan calls for assigning a trial prosecutor to each of the 331 criminal court divisions under the jurisdiction of the 18 district offices of the new service, creating a one-prosecutor-per-division system. About 170 trial prosecutors currently work at the 18 district prosecutors' offices that have trial divisions.
The organization itself will also be smaller than under the earlier plan. Two planning offices headed by deputy chief prosecutors — the criminal affairs planning office and the serious crime planning office — will be abolished at headquarters, and the number of units dedicated to cases police decline to refer will be cut to 13 from the 19 originally envisioned nationwide. The judicial control division, whose name President Lee Jae-myung had criticized as inappropriate, will be renamed the non-referral review division, and the serious crime division will become the serious crime indictment division.
The decree was reworked 10 days before the launch after criticism of the original draft from within the ruling camp. The ministry had initially drawn up a plan that kept the current number of prosecutors, but hardliners in the Democratic Party of Korea argued that this ran counter to the aims of prosecution reform. President Lee then ordered a review, saying there was no need to be bound by the existing Prosecutors' Quota Act.
Legal circles have voiced concern about cutting the organization and its staffing at the very moment it launches. The new service must take on new functions, including fact-checking procedures to determine whether to bring charges and cooperation with and support for judicial police. With prosecutors' authority to conduct supplementary investigations abolished entirely, requests for supplementary investigation directed at police and other first-line investigative agencies are also expected to increase.
Another concern is that reinforcing trial divisions could leave criminal divisions with fewer prosecutors to process cases. As of August this year, 165,000 cases remained unresolved at prosecutors' offices nationwide. With frontline prosecutors already handling hundreds of unresolved cases each, critics say the redeployment could worsen the backlog.
The ministry says it will adjust actual staffing levels in light of those concerns. Lee said that assigning too many prosecutors to trial divisions could leave criminal divisions short-handed for cases referred by police, and that the ministry would adjust the number of prosecutors actually on duty to prevent a backlog.
The service is also launching without a leader. The selection process for its first chief has effectively stalled since Kim Seung-won withdrew as justice minister nominee on the 19th. Lee Jung-hyun, head of the Suwon High Prosecutors' Office, was named acting prosecutor general on the same day, averting a situation in which an acting official would have to stand in for another acting official, but the post of first chief of the Public Prosecution Service remains vacant. The combination of restructuring, staffing cuts and a leadership vacuum has heightened concerns about confusion in the early days.
One senior prosecutor said the number of prosecutors actually handling cases is far lower than the figures suggest once those on leave and senior prosecutors are excluded. "If staffing is cut to fit political demands before the new system has even been tested, it could end up causing a backlog of cases and weakening checks on investigative agencies," the prosecutor said.
