On Oct. 2, 2026, the Prosecution Service, which had stood for 78 years, passed into history. The revised Criminal Procedure Act deleted the provision on prosecutors' investigative authority (Article 196), meaning prosecutors can no longer conduct direct investigations or even supplementary ones. Investigations now fall to the police, the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency and special judicial police, while indictments rest with the Public Prosecution Office. Prosecutors there decide whether to indict based on the case files transferred to them, and if the record falls short they can only "request" supplementary or renewed investigation — they cannot gather evidence themselves.
For a company under investigation, the immediate questions are concrete: Who is investigating our case? Before which agency, and on what points, do we make our arguments? What must we not miss? This article examines how companies should respond to criminal cases under the new system, focusing on three points: who will investigate corporate cases, how defense arguments must be prepared under the restructured criminal justice system, and what practical pitfalls to watch for.
1. Who Investigates Corporate Cases — Choosing the Agency Is Where Strategy Begins
The police continue to investigate cases across the board, and they are now joined by the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency, whose mandate covers six categories of serious crime — corruption, economic crime, defense industry, narcotics, insurrection and foreign aggression, and cybercrime — along with the offense of distorting the law. Notably, the amendment to the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency Act (Act No. 22016), promulgated on Sept. 29, 2026, narrowed the "attack on national core infrastructure" requirement. Previously attached to violations of the Industrial Technology Protection Act, the Unfair Competition Prevention Act (trade secrets) and the Information and Communications Network Act alike, the requirement now applies only to network act offenses. As a result, violations of the Industrial Technology Protection Act and the Unfair Competition Prevention Act involving trade secrets fall entirely within the agency's investigative reach without any separate threshold. Regulatory areas sensitive for companies — labor, serious industrial accidents, financial and securities matters, taxation and customs — are handled by special judicial police such as labor inspectors, the Financial Supervisory Service, the National Tax Service and the Korea Customs Service.
Applied to corporate cases, unfair trading in capital markets, such as use of undisclosed information or price manipulation, goes to the FSS special judicial police or the agency's financial crimes investigation bureau. Collusion cases proceed through a referral from the Fair Trade Commission to the agency's antitrust investigation bureau. Tax cases go to the National Tax Service special judicial police or the agency's economic crimes investigation bureau. For embezzlement and breach of trust, only cases where the gain reaches 500 million won or more, triggering the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Economic Crimes, must be reported to the agency; below that threshold, the police are likely to investigate.
What deserves attention is the referral structure. When the police become aware of a serious crime, they notify the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency, which may request transfer of the case within seven days. The notifying agency may submit, with supporting materials, legitimate grounds for refusing the transfer (Article 43 of the agency's act and Articles 17 through 20 of its enforcement decree). This means the parties themselves have room to make their views known through the agency they want handling the investigation. Even on identical facts, the investigating body and the available avenues of challenge shift depending on how the charges are framed and which agency receives the complaint, so the question of where to fight must be weighed from the complaint stage onward. With prosecutorial direction of investigations gone, expertise and judgment may vary more widely from agency to agency, and as multiple bodies move independently or in competition with one another, the overall volume of investigations aimed at companies may well increase.
2. Defense Must Be Designed in Two Stages — Arguing the Facts Before Investigators, Persuading on Indictment Before the Public Prosecution Office
Because investigation and indictment no longer sit within a single flow as before, the defense must likewise be designed in two stages.
The first is the investigative stage. Since prosecutors cannot gather evidence, the record is effectively fixed at the moment the case is transferred. Companies should settle the scope of statements with counsel before questioning, request that statements be recorded during questioning, and reinforce the record afterward with written submissions, so that favorable facts enter the file before transfer. Where there is doubt about points of law or the propriety of evidence collection, counsel can press the police to seek a prosecutor's opinion (Article 195, Paragraph 3). And if the investigating officer appears to have prejudged the case, one route is to obtain from a prosecutor a demand for supplementary investigation designating a different investigative agency (Article 197-2, Paragraph 8).
The second is the Public Prosecution Office stage. Prosecutors there cannot summon suspects for questioning or prepare suspect interrogation records, but to decide on indictment they may hear the views of suspects, case-related persons and experts (Article 245-13), and they may interview a suspect to review the necessity of detention when an investigative agency applies for a detention warrant (Article 201, Paragraph 7). On detention, however, there is no express right for a suspect to request such an interview, so the necessity of being heard will need to be demonstrated alongside a written submission. In the end, the Public Prosecution Office stage should be prepared as a separate round of advocacy aimed at persuading on the question of indictment or the necessity of detention, explaining the law and the surrounding circumstances that the record alone does not convey. And where favorable facts are absent from the record, counsel should seek ways to have a demand for supplementary investigation issued so that those facts are preserved as evidence.
3. Practical Points — Understanding Transfer in Special Judicial Police Cases, the Deadlines That Determine Rights, and the Procedural Record That Shapes Trial
The two-stage approach above holds regardless of which agency takes the case. To that, three further points warrant attention following the revisions to the Criminal Procedure Act and related statutes.
First, note that there is no "non-transfer" disposition in special judicial police cases. Typical examples involve labor and serious industrial accidents (labor inspectors), capital markets (the FSS), taxation and customs (the National Tax Service and the Korea Customs Service), and intellectual property (the technology special judicial police of the Ministry of Intellectual Property). Special judicial police must transfer every case to the Public Prosecution Office regardless of whether their opinion favors indictment or not, so the objection and renewed-investigation procedures that apply to police and Serious Crimes Investigation Agency cases do not exist here. Prosecutorial direction of investigations has disappeared in these cases as well, but prosecutors at the Public Prosecution Office may offer guidance and advice to special judicial police, and whether that guidance was followed — or the reasons it was not — is entered in the transfer opinion and remains in the record. The upshot is that special judicial police cases are never closed at the investigative stage; the record passes as it stands to the Public Prosecution Office's decision on indictment. Which issues enter that record, and under what legal framing, is determined by the practice of the regulator in question. Anticipating the issues and preparing the record from the earliest phase of an investigation, together with specialists versed in that field, is therefore important in steering the indictment decision favorably.
Second, miss a deadline and the right is lost. An objection to a non-transfer disposition must be filed within three months (Article 245-7); appeals and re-appeals within 30 days each (Article 57 of the Public Prosecution Office Act); and a request for investigative review by the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency within 90 days of notification of the investigation's outcome, and only before the case is transferred (Article 44 of the agency's act and Article 21 of its enforcement decree). Previously there was no deadline for objecting to a non-transfer disposition, so a complainant could object at any point within the statute of limitations; in that respect, the revision reduces uncertainty for suspects. Complainants, for their part, must now watch the newly created objection period. That said, the absence of a complainant's objection after a non-transfer disposition does not mean the investigation is over. A prosecutor may demand renewed investigation within three months of the date the record is sent, and if a demand and the ensuing renewed investigation follow one another, the process can run on for 10 months or more.
Third, the procedural record shapes the trial. From August 2027, video recording of the entire search-and-seizure process becomes mandatory, and suspects gain the right to request that interrogations be recorded (Articles 220-2 and 244-6). The sorting process after electronic data is removed from the premises may, however, fall outside the recording requirement, so the exercise of participation rights and any objection to the scope of sorting should be preserved in writing. Courts have also been given the power to dismiss an indictment where there has been grave illegality in the investigation or a marked abuse of prosecutorial discretion (Article 327). The doctrine of abuse of the indictment power, until now confined to scholarship and case law, has for the first time acquired an express statutory basis. Control at the trial stage, in effect, fills the space left by the disappearance of prior control by prosecutors — and these mechanisms can work effectively only when procedural violations during the investigation are clearly preserved in the record. All the more reason to attend to the procedural record from the investigative stage onward.
In the end, two things matter. Build the facts and the evidence thoroughly at the investigative stage, then separately persuade on the indictment decision before the Public Prosecution Office. The starting point is to confirm which agency is holding the case right now. The next is to design fresh channels of response tailored to the procedures and deadlines that differ from agency to agency. In this transitional period as the new criminal justice system takes effect, the companies that understand the investigative process and get ahead of it will be the ones that reduce their criminal risk.
