[Anchor]

Amid the ongoing controversy over the abolition of the prosecution's authority to conduct supplementary investigations, some argue that it is sufficient for prosecutors to simply request that the police conduct such investigations.

So, would a request for supplementary investigation be enough to handle cases like the Jang Yoon-gi incident? Legal affairs reporter Im Chanjong takes a closer look.

[Reporter]

Regarding the Jang Yoon-gi case, voices within the Democratic Party of Korea argue that it is sufficient for prosecutors to merely request that the police conduct supplementary investigations.

[Kim Han-kyu / Senior Deputy Floor Leader of the Democratic Party of Korea (July 9): It seems that (prosecutorial) supplementary investigation is not the only solution. A system is being prepared that allows for identifying and supplementing issues through requests for supplementary investigation....]

In fact, the Democratic Party's Criminal Procedure Act Task Force announced an amendment on July 9 that would abolish the prosecution's authority to conduct supplementary investigations while strengthening the authority to request them.

The amendment stipulates that the police cannot refuse a prosecutor's request for supplementary investigation, that such requests must be fulfilled within a maximum of two months, and that the implementation period can be set shorter in urgent cases.

A clause has also been added allowing prosecutors to request supplementary investigations from other police stations if it appears difficult for the initial police station to fulfill the request.

However, it turns out that such a request for supplementary investigation would not be effective when applied to the Jang Yoon-gi case.

The biggest reason is that if the police intentionally downplay a case, the request for supplementary investigation itself becomes powerless.

Even if the police are prohibited from refusing a request for supplementary investigation, there is no reason to believe that police officers who have intentionally destroyed evidence would submit that evidence to the prosecution.

Setting a shorter implementation period for supplementary investigation requests is also unlikely to be very effective.

According to the amendment, in cases involving detained suspects like Jang Yoon-gi, the prosecutor must indict the suspect within ten days of receiving the case unless the suspect is released.

However, because a request for supplementary investigation takes longer than the prosecution conducting the investigation itself, it is difficult to secure sufficient evidence within ten days from the start, rendering a shorter implementation period largely meaningless.

If a supplementary investigation is requested from a different police station, it becomes even harder to meet the deadline in detention cases, as police officers unfamiliar with the case would be assigned to it.

[Yang Hong-seok / Lawyer: There are cases where requests (for supplementary investigation) alone are not enough. There must be a safety valve to correct that. That safety valve is the prosecutor's direct supplementary (investigation), and if you just get rid of that, a gap is bound to emerge.]

This is why there is growing sentiment that the prosecution's direct supplementary investigation is necessary to monitor and correct police investigations.

(Video Editing: Choi Hye-ran)