[Anchor]

Today marks one month since the implementation of the new criminal justice system, which centers on abolishing the prosecutors' office and establishing the Serious Crime Investigation Agency and the Prosecution Service. We examined whether the new system is successfully settling into the field, and it has been confirmed that problems previously raised as concerns are actually manifesting.

First, reporter Dong Eunyeong.

[Reporter]

What exactly is an "investigation"?

Various answers can be given, but from a legal perspective, an investigation refers to the collection of evidence to be used in a criminal trial.

Therefore, the abolition of prosecutors' investigative powers, which is the core of the revised Criminal Procedure Act, means that prosecutors can no longer collect evidence.

However, after a month of implementation, critics point out that problems have arisen precisely because of this point.

These can be condensed into three issues: delayed case handling, an increase in rejected warrants, and confusion during trial proceedings.

First is the delay in case handling.

With the abolition of the prosecutors' office and the launch of the Prosecution Service, requests for supplementary investigations have surged.

Prosecutors who receive cases transferred from the police cannot immediately decide whether to indict, leading to an increase in the number of times they request the police to conduct supplementary investigations.

For instance, in a situation where a prosecutor must decide whether to apply the crime of night intrusion theft, if the case record lacks information on the sunset time, in the past, the prosecutor would check the sunset time, add it to the record, and proceed with indictment.

Now, however, even adding the sunset time is considered evidence collection, making it necessary to request a supplementary investigation.

This happens because evidence that prosecutors would have directly collected in the past must now be secured through requests for supplementary investigations.

As a result, the number of supplementary investigation requests over the past month has increased by more than 35% compared to the monthly average last year, inevitably delaying case processing.

A phenomenon of increasing warrant rejections is also appearing.

During the first month after the implementation of the revised Criminal Procedure Act, cases where prosecutors rejected warrants requested by the police have increased, which is also believed to be because prosecutors cannot directly collect evidence and thus must ask the police for supplementation.

Trial proceedings are also in confusion.

Previously, victims could submit evidence to the trial prosecutor during the trial process, but now the prevailing interpretation is that prosecutors cannot even accept such evidence, leaving victims inevitably confused as to where they should submit their evidence.