The Justice Ministry has selected 98 new prosecutors to be assigned to the prosecutor's office, which was established following the dissolution of the previous prosecutor's office.
On October 16, the ministry officially announced the final successful candidates for the '2027 New Prosecutor Appointment Examination,' targeting law school graduates and military lawyers.
The newly selected law school graduates must pass the 16th bar exam scheduled for January 2027 to finalize their appointments. The appointments are expected to occur in May for law school graduates and in August for military lawyers. After their appointments, they will undergo training at the Justice Training Institute before being assigned to local prosecutor's offices around October 2027. This group represents the first prosecutors appointed under the new criminal justice system reforms.
However, despite the new appointments, the prosecutor's office is expected to continue facing staffing shortages. The office plans to operate at 80-85% of its authorized strength of 2,292 prosecutors due to vacancies caused by transfers to the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency, resignations, and departures of former judges.
Currently, there are only 1,921 active prosecutors, and the actual number of working personnel is even lower when excluding those on leave or assigned to other government departments or special prosecutor teams.
Since discussions on adjusting investigative powers began in 2019, the number of retiring prosecutors has exceeded 100 annually. The number of retirees was 145 in 2023, 132 in 2024, and 175 in 2025, with 110 reported by the end of September this year.
As staffing gaps persist, the number of unresolved cases is also rising sharply. As of the end of September, there were 186,307 unresolved cases across local offices, an increase of over 20,000 cases in just one month, raising concerns about the workload on frontline staff.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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