Research Boom in the Prosecution in 2005

No Study, No Promotion-

According to the Supreme Public Prosecutors’ Office, or SPPO, prosecutors who place their papers in legal academic journals will get incentives in times of promotion and evaluation, from 2005.

In the mid and long term, the Supreme Public Prosecutors’ Office plans to set up a research center under the Legal Research and Training Institute and dispatch around 50 prosecutors with more than 10 years of experience there so that they can study criminal law and criminal action systems. It is a dramatic move given that there are only about 1,500 prosecutors in the nation.

One senior official at the Supreme Public Prosecutors’ Office noted, “Now, general-manager prosecutors will be promoted as the general-manager of the SPPO only after they finish their given research tasks.”

The SPPO decided to increase the number of newly appointed prosecutors by 300 for the upcoming five years in order to fill in empty posts caused by an expanded pool of research prosecutors.

Creation of One Specialized Group in Each Public Prosecutors’ Office-

The Supreme Public Prosecutors’ Office projects that it will let each prosecutors’ office create a specialized research group. For instance, the Seoul Central District Public Prosecutors’ Office will create a research group studying special investigation tactics related to special investigations or financial investigations departments, and Ulsan and Changwon Office will each form a group studying labor-related issues.

The SPPO says it will launch an “Anglo-American Law Research Group” with around 30 members in January 2005. It also intends to provide additional research and study material costs for existing groups. The “Bookworms Group” launched in November has 36 prosecutors, including prosecution researcher Bong Wook, as members, and since then has held monthly seminars.

The prosecution’s plan for more research seems to have been influenced by the Judicial Reform Committee’s activities this year. In 2004, the prosecution was sharply criticized for lagging behind the Court, private legal circles, and judicial academic circles in terms of projecting logical ideas and arguing legal principles.

Public Prosecutor General Song Kwang-soo told reporters on December 22, “A look at the Judicial Reform Committee’s activities led me to think the prosecution should enhance its ability by having a lot of research prosecutors trained under the Legal Research and Training Institute.”

jin0619@donga.com