2026: How the Seoul Central District Prosecutor’s Office is Reforming Police Investigations and Protecting Human Rights

“Courts are moving toward stricter reviews of warrants for coercive investigations. If prosecutors don’t supplement that process from a legal perspective, investigations will keep getting delayed as they bounce between courts, prosecutors and the police. That causes suffering for both suspects and victims, and it’s a major human rights violation.”

Lee Si-jeon (a graduate of the 36th class of the Judicial Research and Training Institute), head of the Human Rights Protection Division at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office, told the Seoul Economic Daily that while prosecutors must reflect on and reform past investigative practices, most prosecutorial harms arise from selective initiations and unrelated follow-up probes. He emphasized that the issue of supplemental investigations should be considered separately.

The Human Rights Protection Division performs judicial oversight: it processes warrants requested by the police and special judicial police, and it corrects human rights violations that occur during investigations. While regular criminal divisions decide whether to indict based on police investigation results, the Human Rights Protection Division examines the investigative process itself. As warrant requests and the variety of crimes and evidence-gathering methods have increased, the division’s role has expanded. Last year the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office received 65,421 warrant requests. Compared with 2023, search-and-seizure warrant requests (52,096) rose 25.7%, and arrest warrants (4,099) rose 12%. To speed processing, prosecutors reassigned one anti-corruption prosecutor to the Human Rights Protection Division during the regular February personnel rotation and bolstered the unit by placing three experienced deputy chief prosecutors there.

Lee said, “We typically review more than 100 warrants a day. As crime types diversify and the scope of evidence collection expands, we have more items to check in each case than before.”

From his front-line oversight role, Lee emphasized that supplemental investigations provide a final layer of verification. He argued that prosecutors need that tool as a minimal control to prevent sloppy police investigations and premature case closures.

“Police who conduct an investigation often stick to their initial view once they conclude a suspect is guilty, and prosecutors rarely change that conclusion,” he said. “This judicial reform aims to separate investigation and prosecution to prevent confirmation bias. By the same logic, the initiator and the closer of an investigation should not be the same. Prosecutors with experience in prosecution and case maintenance are best placed to judge whether evidence collected by investigative agencies will function as admissible proof in court. In practice, evidence the police collect often fails to prove charges at trial.”

Lee recalled a notable case in which prosecutors supplemented police work during interviews with suspects held on arrest warrants and helped secure meaningful restitution for victims. Suspects had formed an unregistered multi-level sales operation, solicited victims to invest in coins and character-related products with promises of returns, and ultimately defrauded victims of 50 billion KRW (about 37.5 million USD).

“During police questioning the suspects repeatedly denied the crimes,” Lee said, “but through careful evidence analysis and direct prosecutor interviews, each eventually confessed. We filled gaps the police investigation hadn’t clearly established—such as the specific division of roles—and submitted those findings to the court. That enabled us to obtain arrest warrants for three suspects.”

The Human Rights Protection Division plans to focus on supplementing and supporting police investigations so probes proceed efficiently and without unnecessary delay. It also intends to closely review coercive investigative measures that pose significant human rights risks.

Lee said, “Although the Criminal Procedure Act tightly limits emergency arrests, law enforcement often applies them citing the need for detention at the scene. We will scrutinize those conditions carefully. We will also review whether routinely approved travel bans on suspects are being left in place for unreasonably long periods.”