Kim Min-jae, vice minister of the Ministry of Interior and Safety and head of the preparation committee for the launch of the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency, center, inspects readiness at the committee's office in the Changseong-dong annex of Government Complex Seoul in Jongno-gu, Seoul, on April 30. [Yonhap]
Kim Min-jae, vice minister of the Ministry of Interior and Safety and head of the preparation committee for the launch of the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency, center, inspects readiness at the committee's office in the Changseong-dong annex of Government Complex Seoul in Jongno-gu, Seoul, on April 30. [Yonhap]

Preparations have begun to build a website for the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency, a new body set to be established alongside the Public Prosecution Service when the Prosecution Service is abolished this October.

The agency's launch preparation committee, operating under the Ministry of Interior and Safety, posted an emergency notice on the government procurement portal Friday for a project to build the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency's official website. The committee plans to accept bids Thursday and open them the following Monday.

In its request for proposals, the committee said the agency "will be newly established on Oct. 2, 2026, and a digital communications channel will be built to provide the public with information on institutional promotion and civil complaint guidance, with the website constructed entirely from scratch based on an integrated structure and content design that reflects the agency's core values."

The project covers the construction of public-facing websites for the agency's main office and its six regional investigation offices. The committee said the sites will carry information on agency administrators, institutional details, investigation and operational status, and digital administrative services.

The committee said it would analyze the websites of the Supreme Prosecutors' Office, the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials and the Korean National Police Agency to design menus and functions suited to the new agency's founding purpose. It cited the prosecutors' model — a "hierarchical structure" consolidating the Supreme Prosecutors' Office, six high prosecutors' offices, 18 district prosecutors' offices and 42 branch offices under a single platform — alongside the corruption investigation office's "single-structure" model as reference cases.

The proposed design principles for the website include: maximizing operational efficiency and consistency by applying an integrated platform across the main office and regional investigation office sites; configuring the main screen and menu layout to strengthen civil complaint and reporting functions for an investigative agency; and maintaining visual consistency by applying similar designs to regional office sites based on the main office's standards. The project also calls for a cloud-based system configuration through the National Information Resources Service.

The request for proposals repeatedly emphasized "rapid pilot operation and service launch" in time for the October opening. The project timeline runs to 150 days from the date of contract. Before the launch, the committee must complete management, analysis, design, development, testing and implementation phases; service stabilization and user training are scheduled for after the launch. The fact that user training falls after the opening date underscores how tight the schedule is.

For investigative IT systems, the agency will share the Korean National Police Agency's Criminal Justice Information System, known as KICS. The plan is to use the shared system on a temporary basis until the agency builds its own, to help settle investigative operations early. However, some have raised concerns about potential leaks of investigative information. In response, the preparation committee said the Korea Coast Guard had used a similar shared arrangement in the past.

The preparation committee said it selected Renaissance Square in Jung-gu, Seoul, as the site for the main office and the Seoul branch on June 24, judging that a standalone building was appropriate given the intent to separate investigation from prosecution. On July 2, it said it had selected sites for some regional offices. Final contracts have yet to be signed, however, and issues with inadequate facilities at some locations remain unresolved.

Ongoing National Assembly discussions on revising the Code of Criminal Procedure — including the abolition of prosecutors' supplementary investigation authority as part of the broader dismantling of the Prosecution Service — are also affecting the agency's staffing and organizational planning. Current prosecution personnel are closely watching how authority and functions will be divided between the new agency and the Public Prosecution Service. Concerns about the consequences of eliminating prosecutors' supplementary investigation authority have grown following recent allegations that police concealed and omitted evidence in the so-called Jang Yun-gi case, and a bill allowing limited retention of that authority has been introduced within the Democratic Party of Korea.

Some observers note that the preparation process has been effectively inadequate. The Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials set up its own preparation committee in February 2020 and formally launched nearly a year later in January 2021. By contrast, the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency's preparation committee was only formed on April 30, yet the agency must open by Oct. 2 and replace the investigative functions of prosecution offices nationwide.


bell@heraldcorp.com