A court has ruled that even the list of internal rules operated confidentially by the prosecution is subject to information disclosure.
According to the legal community Thursday, the 10th Administrative Division of the Seoul Administrative Court (presiding judge Jeong Eun-young) ruled in favor of the plaintiff in April in a lawsuit filed by the People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD) against the Prosecutor General seeking the cancellation of a decision to deny information disclosure.
In September last year, PSPD requested that the Supreme Prosecutors' Office disclose information including the entire list of regulations and directives held and operated confidentially, as well as the document numbers of internal rules. However, the Supreme Prosecutors' Office made a non-disclosure decision on the grounds that confidential directives and regulations are mainly directly related to the prosecution's core duties, such as investigations and maintaining prosecutions. After its objection was rejected in October of the same year, PSPD filed an administrative lawsuit.
The court sided with PSPD. The court ruled that withholding even the list on the grounds that individual internal rules — rather than the list itself — contain confidential information does not accord with the purpose of the Information Disclosure Act.
The Supreme Prosecutors' Office countered that "the mere disclosure of the list would allow a rough estimation of the entire structure of the prosecution organization and the content of its major duties," arguing there was a specific risk of infringing on the confidentiality and efficiency of investigations.
However, the court did not accept this argument either. The court ruled, "Even if the titles and document numbers of confidential internal rules are disclosed, it is difficult to conclude that the plaintiff would thereby newly learn the organizational structure, personnel matters, or work content of the Supreme Prosecutors' Office, or that there is a risk of causing significant disruption to the prosecution's work performance."
It added, "The prosecution has not disclosed the list of confidential internal rules itself, thereby making it impossible for ordinary citizens to even know of the existence of such rules. It is necessary to disclose the information in this case to guarantee the public's right to know and to secure public participation in and transparency of the operation of confidential internal rules."
