Prosecution Office to Push for Cutting Prosecutor Quota to 80%–85%... Changes Name of 'Non-Prosecution Review Division'

The Prosecution Office, which will replace the Prosecutors' Office starting from October 2nd, will open with a prosecutor quota set at 80% to 85% of the level stipulated in the current act, and the law will be revised to further reduce the quota going forward.

The Ministry of Justice announced today (the 22nd) that the revised proposals for the "Organization of the Prosecution Office and its Affiliated Agencies" and the "Enforcement Decree of the Prosecutors' Quota Act," which were legislative notices from the 4th to the 9th, were approved at a Cabinet meeting.

The revised proposal includes further reductions to investigative personnel compared to the previously announced organization plan, the additional abolition of 3 deputy prosecutor-level positions and 8 departments, and changes to controversial department names.

Regarding the prosecutor quota, which drew the most controversy, the Prosecution Office will be launched at approximately 80% to 85% of the current 2,292 prosecutors stipulated in the Prosecutors' Quota Act.

In addition, even after the launch of the Prosecution Office, vacancies arising from special appointments to the Serious Crime Investigation Agency will not be filled.

Since the prosecutor quota is stipulated in the Prosecutors' Quota Act and can only be changed through a resolution by the National Assembly, operations are currently maintained with a vacancy rate of around 10%, but it has been decided to further expand this vacancy margin.

The Ministry of Justice plans to push for a revision of the Prosecutors' Quota Act to reduce the prosecutor quota.

However, the scale of the reduction will be decided after the launch of the Prosecution Office through job analysis and organizational diagnosis by an external agency, taking into account the implementation of the new system.

Furthermore, the Ministry of Justice decided to additionally reduce 230 criminal legal affairs personnel (currently investigators) compared to what was stated in the previous legislative notice.

A total of 2,048 investigators will be cut, which accounts for 68.6% of the current 2,986 investigators.

In addition to this, 477 general positions will also be reduced, bringing the total scale of general position reductions to 2,525 (approximately 30% of the total).

The "Judicial Control Division," which had drawn criticism for having an inappropriate name, will be renamed the "Non-Prosecution Review Division," and the "Serious Crime Dedicated Division" will be changed to the "Serious Crime Prosecution Division."

The Non-Prosecution Review Division is a department that prevents cases from being buried by post-checking the legality and appropriateness of cases sent without prosecution by judicial police, while the Serious Crime Prosecution Division handles cases transferred from the Serious Crime Investigation Agency.

(Photo: Yonhap News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.