[Anchor]

Then, let's examine what specifically changes and how in the criminal justice system that will be completely revamped starting tomorrow (Oct. 2), and what impact it will have on the lives of the public, together with legal specialist reporter Im Chanjong.

Q. Major Shake-up in Criminal Justice System... Any Concerns?

[Im Chanjong / Legal Specialist Reporter: Actually, the most serious problem is that even experts find it difficult to predict what specific issues will arise. Procedural laws like the Criminal Procedure Act are like the operating system of a computer or smartphone. In other words, our citizens, who have been using the iPhone operating system, are effectively going to switch to Android starting tomorrow without changing the hardware. However, when fundamentally changing an operating system like this, common sense dictates that extensive pre-tests should be conducted to catch errors before release. In fact, when the Civil Procedure Act was extensively revised, it went through years of preliminary review work. But such work was absent during this revision of the Criminal Procedure Act. Therefore, experts frankly predict that it is difficult to anticipate what specific problems will occur in various areas such as detention periods and the admissibility of evidence. Still, we can outline the macro-level issues focusing on the points that have been controversial so far.]

Q. What Impact on Public Case Handling?

[Im Chanjong / Legal Specialist Reporter: Two issues are raised first. The prolonged processing of cases, and the decline in the indictment rate. What does this mean? When you suffer a crime, not only will the period until the perpetrator is put on trial become longer, but the probability of the perpetrator being indicted itself will decrease. This is because prosecutors' supplementary investigations have been abolished. Cases that prosecutors previously investigated supplementarily and indicted directly will now have to be sent back to the police with a request for supplementary investigations, which inevitably leads to a longer processing time. Also, since there is no guarantee that the police will conduct supplementary investigations as requested by prosecutors, cases where supplementary investigations are not carried out according to the prosecutors' intentions are likely to see an increase in non-indictment decisions by prosecutors.]

Q. Responding to Serious Crimes, Any Problems?

[Im Chanjong / Legal Specialist Reporter: A vacuum is inevitable for the time being. Starting tomorrow, there are three agencies capable of investigating serious crimes: the Corruption Investigation Office for High-Ranking Officials (CIO), the police, and the newly established Serious Crimes Investigation Agency. Among them, the CIO lacks both authority and capacity, the police are not a specialized investigation agency for serious crimes and are expected to be busy handling a surge in general cases for the time being, and the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency is virtually unprepared as we saw earlier. For the time being, no agency is in a position to investigate properly. Therefore, there is even an analysis that the biggest beneficiaries of this matter will be criminals who have committed serious crimes whose statutes of limitations expire within the next six to twelve months, but who have not yet been caught. This is because it is projected that the serious crime investigation system will not normalize by then. Separately from this, structural problems are also pointed out. As explained earlier, the CIO, the police, and the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency will share slightly overlapping investigative powers, which creates room for agencies to pass on cases they do not want to handle. Consequently, concerns are also being raised that a phenomenon is likely to occur where no one tries to take charge of so-called cases involving 'living power' or burdensome cases.]

(Video Editing: Shin Se-eun)