Police failed to comply with prosecutors' request for supplementary investigation for more than four years before belatedly referring a case just ahead of the expiration of the statute of limitations, it has emerged.
According to reporting by The Seoul Economic Daily on the 16th, the Suseo Police Station in Seoul referred a case to prosecutors in the middle of last month, seeking punishment of a franchise nail salon for violating the Door-to-Door Sales Act.
This came five years after the complainant had filed the complaint. The complainant filed the complaint in 2021, claiming that shortly after purchasing a membership from the company, its branches all closed at once without any guidance on consumer relief measures such as refunds.
At the time, police dismissed the complaint, finding insufficient evidence to prove the company's alleged wrongdoing. However, after the complainant filed an objection, police resumed the investigation and handed the case over to prosecutors in April of the following year.
Prosecutors immediately returned the case with a request for supplementary investigation. But police issued no particular disposition for about four years, then belatedly referred the case again when the expiration of the five-year statute of limitations for the alleged offense loomed just a month away.
Police explained that the incident arose from a combination of a system error and a mistake by the investigator in charge shortly after the overhaul of the Korea Information System of Criminal Justice Services (KICS), and that they had not intentionally delayed the disposition.
The Suseo Police Station said it would immediately launch an internal probe into the investigator to specifically determine the circumstances behind the delayed handling of the case. Under the police disciplinary ordinance, officers ranking inspector or below are subject to internal investigation by their own agency.
