The Serious Crimes Investigation Agency is preparing to launch in October, but obstacles are emerging from the very first step of securing regional office buildings. Following the recent collapse of a lease agreement for the Suwon office, other regional offices are also grappling with facility and location problems, fueling growing concern in legal circles that the launch is being rushed before preparations are sufficient. There are also warnings that the agency faces no shortage of tasks to resolve, including building investigation computer networks and security facilities and securing personnel.
According to legal circles on the 15th, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety's Serious Crimes Investigation Agency establishment preparation team selected the former Lotte Mart Yeongtong branch in Yeongtong-gu, Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, as the Suwon office, but the lease agreement ultimately fell through. With less than three months remaining before the agency's launch, one of the five regional offices now faces having to search for a location from scratch again.
The building owner is reported to have withdrawn from the contract, shifting the business direction to self-development sales rather than leasing, citing reasons such as rising real estate values in the surrounding area. "The lessor withdrew their intention to lease, so we are looking for an alternative site," a preparation team official said. "We plan to select a new office building as soon as possible."
The preparation team announced the locations of five regional offices on the 2nd of this month, including Suwon, Busan, Daegu, Gwangju, and Daejeon (Sejong). However, with the Suwon office contract falling through less than two weeks after the announcement, criticism has emerged in legal circles that the locations were disclosed hastily before contracts were even finalized.
Questions are also being raised about whether the other regional offices are suitable for use as investigative agencies. The buildings designated for the Gwangju and Daegu offices have old or inadequate parking facilities, and difficulties are expected in operating vehicles for transporting suspects. The preparation team maintains that it will ensure there are no problems with operating official vehicles, but assessments suggest there is little time to supplement the necessary facilities within the remaining period.
The Busan office is scheduled to be established in Myeongji-dong, Gangseo-gu, Busan, but it is about 31 kilometers away from the legal district where the Busan District Court and Busan District Prosecutors' Office are located. Since it can take 30 to 40 minutes by car under normal conditions and more than an hour during commuting hours, there are concerns that the burden of travel could increase during the process of requesting arrest warrants or executing search and seizure warrants after emergency arrests. The Daejeon office is also scheduled to be established in Sejong City because a suitable site could not be secured, so inconvenience is expected in the movement of case parties and in cooperation with related agencies.
Building security infrastructure is also not an easy task. Investigative agencies must be equipped with security facilities different from ordinary offices, including interrogation rooms, seized evidence storage rooms, digital forensics facilities, detention spaces, and access control systems. Even if the lease agreement is finalized quickly, all interior construction and information and communications network installation must be completed within three months. In particular, the Busan and Daejeon offices are considering plans to use only some floors of the buildings, so the issues of separating the movement paths of ordinary visitors and investigation personnel and maintaining evidence security must also be resolved.
Organizational structuring is also not going smoothly. As the arrangement of subordinate legislation has been delayed, personnel recruitment work has also failed to gain speed. The government is considering a plan to fill about 2,000 of the agency's roughly 3,000-member quota with prosecution personnel, but among prosecutors, there is reportedly considerable concern that moving to the agency could disadvantage them in terms of rank or treatment.
Signs of change are also being detected in personnel within the preparation team. The preparation team recently requested the Ministry of Justice to dispatch a deputy division chief prosecutor, identified as A, from the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors' Office, and the Ministry of Justice is reportedly currently proceeding with approval procedures. A plan to replace two prosecutors who had previously been working there is also reportedly being considered.
This has prompted interpretations that internal conflicts revealed during the preparation process may be leading to personnel changes. "Given the nature of an organization where personnel dispatched from various ministries work together, there are aspects that make the process of coordinating opinions difficult," a legal circles official said. Currently, four prosecutors, about 30 Ministry of Justice employees, 15 Ministry of the Interior and Safety officials, and about 10 police officers are dispatched to the preparation team.
The Ministry of the Interior and Safety plans to prepare the agency's organizational structure and investigator appointment ordinance by next month and push for the launch in October as scheduled. However, legal circles are concerned that if the launch is forced through while even the regional offices have not been finalized, gaps could arise in the criminal justice system. If the agency fails to operate normally at a time when the prosecution's direct investigation function is being abolished, disruptions to serious crime investigations would be inevitable, they argue. In fact, the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials also officially launched in January 2021 but did not begin full-scale investigations until April of the same year.
"If the agency launches just to meet the schedule while securing office buildings and organizing the structure remain unfinished, the harm from the criminal justice gap will inevitably fall on the public," a legal circles official said.
