President Lee Jae-myung has ordered the Justice Ministry to revise its proposed structure for the new prosecution office, reopening questions over how many prosecutors it should retain and how it should review police decisions not to send cases forward. The instruction came after Lee returned from a state visit to France and received a briefing on the ministry’s draft organization plan and related enforcement decree.
The most immediate issue is staffing. The ministry had proposed keeping the statutory prosecutor quota at 2,292, but Lee questioned whether the new body needed to preserve the existing number. He also criticized the proposed name Judicial Control Division for a unit that would examine cases police decided not to refer. The intervention follows criticism from figures in the governing camp who argued that the draft risked recreating elements of the old prosecution system.
A reform enters its implementation phase
The timing makes the revision consequential. The current prosecution service is due to be abolished and the new prosecution office launched on October 2, leaving limited room to redesign staffing and internal functions. Lee’s direction effectively sends the ministry back to the drafting table during the legislative notice period rather than allowing the first proposal to harden into the operating model.
The dispute is about more than terminology. How many prosecutors remain, and what authority they have when reviewing police decisions, will shape the practical balance between investigation and prosecution after the reform. Critics of the draft see a risk that old powers could return through organizational design; the government now has to show how the new structure differs in practice.
Attention now turns to a revised Justice Ministry proposal. The presidency has extended pressure for closer review of the prosecutor quota, the disputed division name and related functions before the October launch. The details matter because institutional reform is ultimately implemented through staffing, jurisdiction and workflow, not only through the legal act of replacing one agency with another.