South Korea brings powerful prosecution agency to heel

For 78 years, South Korea's prosecutors were feared and admired for their broad authority to investigate crimes as well as to bring cases to court.

But this Friday, the prosecution service will be abolished and its functions divided between two new agencies -- a victory for reformers, but one some fear could leave an investigative vacuum in areas such as financial crime.

The new Serious Crime Investigation Agency, under the interior ministry, will shoulder major investigations, with police handling the rest. The Public Prosecution Office, under the justice ministry, will decide whether to bring charges and represent the state at trial.

President Lee Jae Myung's Democratic Party has long argued that the outgoing system enabled politically motivated investigations and gave prosecutors near-unchecked authority.

At a meeting of senior aides on Thursday, Lee said: "We are bringing an end to an era of wrongdoing -- a time when the prosecution monopolised both investigation and indictment, exercising unchecked power and, even worse, acting as a 'political prosecution' to suppress and eliminate political rivals."

Now imprisoned over his botched December 2024 martial law declaration, former chief prosecutor-turned-conservative president Yoon Suk Yeol's ascent to power in 2022 -- and appointment of old colleagues to senior posts -- revived criticisms at the time of a "prosecutors' republic".

Under the reforms, the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors' Office, known as the "grim reaper" of Yeouido, the banking district, for the rigour of its financial crime investigations, will see its specialist operations dismantled and rebuilt inside the SCIA.

"White-collar crimes may be difficult to handle," said Park Ju-geun, head of corporate research group Leaders Index. He believes the SCIA and police would need more time to build up expertise.

A serving prosecutor who wished to be identified only by their surname, Son, said that SCIA officers, of whom they estimate 70 per cent have come from the old prosecution service, "have a building with desks in it, but no computers or even pens yet". Yet at the same time, the agency feels pressure to "go after a big target, to prove itself", they added.

Handing more investigative power to the police is also coming under scrutiny because of recent scandals. In July, a police team leader was arrested over alleged evidence tampering in the murder of a schoolgirl; the accused killer's father, himself a serving officer, was suspected of destroying evidence. Then just over a month ago it emerged that a police officer had allegedly falsified the closure of two missing-person cases, with both people later found dead.

Lee referenced such concerns at the Thursday meeting, stating police reform would also be a "key task" for his administration.

A particular flashpoint of the reforms has been the loss of prosecutors' power to conduct "supplementary" investigations when their review of a police file exposes gaps before an indictment decision. Under the new system, prosecutors may identify missing facts but must ask police to investigate them again.

The uncertainty surrounding the changeover is the latest chapter in a long and controversial history. The prosecution service was founded in September 1948 -- less than a month after South Korea itself -- and accumulated power under successive autocratic governments.

Pro-democracy activists reviled the service both as an instrument for pursuing dissidents and as a pipeline into the authoritarian political elite. A young prosecutor named Kim Ki-choon embodied both: in 1972, Kim helped draft military ruler Park Chung Hee's authoritarian Yushin Constitution, before rising to become justice minister and, decades later, chief of staff to Park's daughter, then president Park Geun-hye.

The organisation survived democratisation in 1987, and its clashes with progressive leaders made reform a cause of the left. Supporters of former president Roh Moo-hyun viewed the corruption investigation preceding his 2009 suicide as politically driven; Lee has likewise portrayed cases against him as selective justice.

"The death of Roh was a great shock, and a tragedy. Prosecution reform is maybe a sort of holy grail," said Park Ye-rin, a rank-and-file member of Lee's Democratic Party. "But speaking less emotionally, it can't be right to have all that power with one place."

Prosecutorial prestige was cultural as well as political. Son said joining the service "overjoyed" their parents and meant both acquiring "a job with power" and being recognised as a "state-certified elite". Prosecutors were "objects of aspiration", they added, due to their authority, the future opportunities available to them in law and politics, and media portrayals that enhanced their mystique.

For Son though, regardless of how the system is structured, "any holder of power seeks to utilise the prosecution once they take office".