Prosecutors request record number of search and seizure warrants in 2022

The Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office in Seocho District, southern Seoul [YONHAP]

Prosecutors in Korea requested over 390,000 search and seizure warrants in 2022, the highest figure in over a decade.

Last year, a total of 396,671 search warrants were requested by the prosecution, averaging about 1,000 warrant applications a day.

Of the total, 35,195 search warrant applications were dismissed by the court, making the total issuance rate 91.1 percent. This figure has been consistently rising since 2011.

Many companies complain that the excessive raids launched by prosecutors even target documents for advisory services.

“I have seen prosecutors using documents shared with a law firm for the purpose of advisory services as evidence in court,” said an employee at the legal affairs department of a Korean conglomerate.

An executive at DB Financial Investment, who was accused of colluding with the management of Sillajen for disguising a payment of the company’s bond with a warrant last August, was sentenced to prison after a lawyer’s legal opinion document seized during a raid was shown as evidence.

The seizure of digital data is another problem as it could refer to the extensive amount of data saved in PC computers and cell phones.

A search warrant usually refers to the evidence to be obtained as simply “all data related to the case,” which is ambiguous in terms of what the prosecutors should seize and search.

To set some standards and limit the extent of what to search and seize when it comes to digital data, the Supreme Court previously suggested some legal requirements for digital data.

In 2011, the court specified raids should only “collect printed documents of parts that are related to the allegation or to copy the digital files and transfer them to the investigators’ storage systems,” after investigators had copied all the data stored in the computers of the Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union during a raid.

But “taking the storage system, such as PC computers, or the copy directly outside [of the union office] may be accepted as an exceptional case if mentioned on the warrant or if needed.”

Prosecutors say such extensive and excessive raids are needed as they would “need to search in order to know what they should seize as evidence.”

Digital folders and files are some examples of what prosecutors would need to check one by one, as the name of the files does not necessarily explain what it contains.

For instance, a document that included the shares of developers regarding the Daejangdong land development scandal, obtained during a raid, was titled, “playing better golf.”

A memo saved in one of the developers’ cell phones found during the search was also titled, “Dec. 27, 2021. Drone. Gangnam.”

The word “drone” referred to Kim Yong, former deputy head of the Democratic Party (DP)-affiliated think tank Institute for Democracy and a close aide to DP Chairman Lee Jae-myung. Yong in Korean means “dragon,” which was apparently further shortened to “drone.”

“There are many cases in which metaphors and unofficial jargon are used in case a raid,” said an official from the prosecution.

“Because of this, to explicitly mention what to search and designate a search period when issuing the warrant, as requested by some companies and judicial authorities, is impossible.”

The prosecution also added that a sharp rise in the number of searches and seizures is a mere “statistical misrepresentation.”

According to the prosecution, a total of 35 raids were launched over a period of four months to arrest the murder suspect Lee Eun-hae and her accomplice Cho Hyeon-soo, who are both accused of having murdered Lee’s husband.

The prosecutors needed a warrant to track down the steps taken by the duo, including to confirm whether they had accessed portal sites, activated a burner phone, passed a toll gate or gone to a hospital.

For the arrest of a key suspect in the so-called second Nth room, an online sex abuse crime targeting underage women in Korea, the prosecution had to launch a total of 220 raids to identify and apprehend the suspect at his home in Australia.

Despite the prosecution’s explanation, however, the Supreme Court drew up a measure that could limit the excessive number of raids conducted by the prosecution.

The Supreme Court last month announced the implementation of a system for judges to conduct in-person investigations if they believe it is necessary to investigate people who are familiar with the accusations of a case, including police and prosecutors, before issuing a search warrant.

The prosecution raised concerns over the possibility of leaking information on the probe during the “pre-warrant issuance” period. The Justice Ministry on March 14 also sent an official opposition letter to the Supreme Court.

Legal authorities, on one hand, are longing for the passing of Attorney-Client Privilege legislation, which allows resisting the disclosure of confidential communication occurring between an attorney and their client, unless there are special reasons of public interest, such as if the information shared between the two could prevent additional crimes or if the attorney is accused of a crime.

Such a revision to the Attorney-at-law Act has been proposed multiple times, but has always been turned down by the National Assembly’s standing committee.

In a report published in 2017, a professor at Kangwon National University School of Law Lee Tae-young also stressed that while the act should be implemented, “the reason for significant public interest should be specified into categories.”

BY OH HYO-JEONG, KIM CHUL-WOONG, LEE CHANG-HOON, KIM JEONG-YEON [cho.jungwoo1@joongang.co.kr]