“No word two years after reporting it to the police”…A flood of “case bombs”

1. Overview

When the Prosecutors’ Office was abolished in October 2026 and the Public Prosecution Office and Serious Crimes Investigation Agency were launched, claims spread through online communities that “even if you become a crime victim now, your case will take forever to process or never be solved.” The claims were accompanied by graphs of unsolved cases and screenshots of news articles.

One widely circulated post was titled “Why You’re Screwed If You’re a Crime Victim from Now On” and was uploaded to FM Korea, where it received 250,000 views and around 370 comments. It showed, in sequence, a graph of the Prosecutors’ Office’s unsolved cases, a table of the proposed organizational structure of the Public Prosecution Office, and screenshots of articles about police workloads. It presented the chain of events as “abolition of the Prosecutors’ Office → fewer investigators → police overload → reluctance to investigate → explosion in unsolved cases,” and ended by warning readers to be especially careful not to get caught up in economic or financial crimes. Most of the figures in the post came from actual news reports, but the periods and contexts they refer to do not necessarily support the post’s conclusion.

2. What changed

On October 2, 2026, the revised Criminal Procedure Act took effect, closing the Prosecutors’ Office after more than 70 years. The newly established Public Prosecution Office handles indictments and maintains prosecutions, while the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency (SCIA) investigates the seven major categories of serious crime, including corruption, economic crime, and drug offenses. The police initiate and initially conclude most other criminal investigations. Prosecutors’ authority to conduct their own investigations and supplementary investigations was abolished. If a case referred to prosecutors has deficiencies, they can only request that the police conduct a supplementary investigation or reinvestigation. Under the new law, the police are generally required to complete an investigation within one month of a request for a supplementary investigation and within three months of a request for a reinvestigation.

3. Figures cited in the post

3.1. Unsolved cases at the Prosecutors’ Office

The first graph showed that long-term unsolved cases at the Prosecutors’ Office—those pending for more than three months—increased from 4,426 in 2021 to 22,564 in July 2025. The figures came from data that Park Eun-jeong of the Rebuilding Korea Party received from the Ministry of Justice in September 2025. News reports at the time described this as a four-year increase since the 2021 adjustment of investigative powers. A second graph, based on Supreme Prosecutors’ Office figures, showed that the total number of unsolved cases at the Prosecutors’ Office had increased from 32,424 in 2021 to 96,256 in 2025. By the end of July 2026, shortly before the office was abolished, the number had grown to 165,020—an increase of 71.4% in just six months.

3.2. Public Prosecution Office staffing

The table in the post came from the proposed organizational structure of the Public Prosecution Office, which the Ministry of Justice announced for public comment on September 4, 2026. The number of general staff positions was to fall from 8,414 to 6,120, a reduction of 27.3%. Investigative staff positions within that total were to fall from 4,284 to 2,133, a reduction of 50.2%. The post’s claim of a “20% decrease compared with the existing workforce” appears to refer to news reports stating that the Public Prosecution Office’s total headcount, including prosecutors, would be around 20% lower than before, at 8,412. The proposed structure was revised on September 22, further reducing general staff positions to 5,890; a plan was also advanced to reduce the number of prosecutor positions to 80–85% of the current level.

3.3. Police workload

The remaining screenshots came from reports published from late September to early October 2026 about the burden on the police. The average annual number of cases assigned per police investigator rose by 21.2%, from about 110 in 2023 to about 133 in 2025. Over the same period, the number of cases received by the police rose by 19.7%, from around 2.48 million to around 2.97 million. As of 2025, the police had about 4.63 million unsolved cases. KBS reported that the total would exceed 360,000 when 220,000 long-term unsolved police cases were combined with high-difficulty cases transferred from the Prosecutors’ Office. The same report said that more police officers had voluntarily surrendered their “investigation specialist” qualification this year than in any of the previous three years. A police superintendent-level officer said, “So many cases are being assigned that I can’t even touch the unsolved cases left by my predecessor.”

4. Authenticity debate

The central question is whether abolishing the Prosecutors’ Office is actually delaying the handling of victims’ cases and increasing the number of unsolved cases, or whether it is being blamed for trends that were already underway and disruption during the transition period.

4.1. The view that the situation is genuinely risky

All the figures point in the same direction. Unsolved cases at the Prosecutors’ Office increased by more than 70% in the six months before its abolition, and a substantial number of them are now being transferred to the police. The number of cases assigned to each police investigator had already been rising year after year, and the police have millions of unsolved cases. With prosecutors no longer able to conduct supplementary investigations themselves, the police must also take on that work. The number of cases per investigator in economic crime investigation teams rose by 57% even after staffing was increased by 56%, meaning cases piled up faster despite the addition of personnel. The growing number of officers surrendering their investigation specialist qualification is a sign that frontline staff are already struggling. Under these conditions, can victims of complex fraud and financial crimes expect their cases to be handled promptly?

4.2. The view that the claims are exaggerated

However, the post linked figures from different periods to a single cause. The increase in long-term unsolved cases shown in the first graph reflects a four-year trend following the 2021 adjustment of investigative powers, predating the abolition of the Prosecutors’ Office in October 2026. The “50% reduction in investigative staff” is also largely due to investigative functions being transferred to the SCIA, reducing the Public Prosecution Office’s investigative departments. The police are also assigning around 4,000 additional officers to investigative units across the first and second halves of 2026. A police lieutenant colonel with extensive investigative experience said, “It was already uncommon for prosecutors to conduct supplementary investigations into cases the police referred after the adjustment of investigative powers,” adding, “There won’t be much change even with the abolition of supplementary investigative authority.” Whether case processing has actually slowed can only be confirmed once statistics from after the new system took effect become available. Still, given that the SCIA launched with only 66% of its authorized staffing and the police already have many unsolved cases, it is difficult to deny the burden of the transition itself.

5. Trivia

• Preparations for the launch of the Public Prosecution Office took place amid a vacancy in the justice minister’s post in September 2026, including the resignation of a nominee for the position. After being announced for public comment, the proposed organizational structure was revised once following an order from the president to review it.
• The Public Prosecution Office was given a 90-day grace period for supplementary investigations, during which it was to handle important cases, such as those nearing the statute of limitations.