South Korea's ruling party leans on retained prosecution chiefs to carry cases into the new system

The continuity Han Byung-do offered is continuity of people ^[5]. In most districts, the official who signs indictments on October 2 ^[1] ran the same office the day before. That official no longer has investigators. When a file needs more work, the office has to ask an investigative agency to do it ^[4].

Han, the Democratic Party's floor leader ^[1], made the case directly. "The disappearance of prosecutors' investigative powers does not mean the state loses its investigative function," he said ^[3]. The function moves to other agencies. For anyone with a file open, the cost of the change comes down to how long a request takes to travel from a prosecution office to an investigator and back.

The handover can go a few ways. If the retained heads and the new police units absorb the work, the change shows up mainly on the organisation chart. In that case Han's promise holds: "There will never be a case left drifting between agencies or a victim denied redress," he said ^[14]. If they do not absorb it, delay collects in one of two places. One is the queue of supplementary-investigation requests. The other is the consultative council where police, the Major Crimes Investigation Agency and the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials are supposed to settle who owns a case ^[7].

I'd expect the request queue to strain first. Police are building dedicated units for supplementary investigation before the first request arrives ^[6], and an agency puts people in place early where it expects volume. The counter-case rests on the same personnel decision. Heads who already know their files can write narrow requests, and narrow requests come back faster. If requests are answered at the pace an office's own investigators used to work, my view is wrong.

The transfers themselves were still under way on the eve of launch. "Police are also forming dedicated supplementary investigation units and working on transferring cases and converting wanted notices," Han said ^[6]. "This is no reason to frighten the public with claims that all wanted notices will be voided," he said ^[8]. The party did not say how many cases are moving or how many notices remain to be converted.

Police come out of the reorganisation with more work and a new overseer. A police reform committee under the Office for Government Policy Coordination will pursue democratic oversight of police alongside stronger investigative capacity, Han said ^[9]. To the opposition People Power Party he said, "Do not dress up opposition to reform as public anxiety" ^[10].

The only spending item at the same meeting went to farms. Han welcomed the government's plan to top up agriculture and fisheries funds from the budget ^[12]. The preliminary findings of the government's economic impact analysis worried those industries, and the party said it would not push to join the CPTPP alone until measures for farmers' and fishers' losses are in place ^[11]. Han will chair a new special committee on agricultural policy himself ^[13].