NDFC expansion project under full review
Forensic science division to be scaled back
Major-crime field investigations to move to new agency
The Ministry of Justice has decided to conduct a full review of a planned expansion of the Supreme Prosecutors' Office's National Digital Forensic Center (NDFC), a project budgeted at around 50 billion won ($36.8 million). With the imminent launch of a new Public Prosecution Service and Serious Crime Investigation Agency (SCIA) set to absorb a significant portion of the prosecutors' forensic science functions, the ministry said it needed to reassess whether a large-scale expansion remained necessary.
The ministry said Saturday it would "conduct a full review of whether to proceed with the project, taking into account that field forensic science functions for serious crimes will be transferred to the SCIA and that organizational and personnel restructuring is planned following the launch of the Public Prosecution Service and the SCIA."
The NDFC expansion had been pursued on the grounds that the existing building, completed in 2008, had aged and that forensic personnel and equipment had reached capacity. The ministry has been pushing the project since 2021. Officials acknowledged that the project had moved forward on its original schedule without accounting for the planned separation of investigation and prosecution functions or the government's plan to relocate agencies to Sejong.
The prosecutors' forensic science organization is also set for a major overhaul. Under the future Public Prosecution Service, the forensic science division — currently headed by a prosecutor-general-level official — will be abolished and replaced with a smaller forensic science planning office led by a deputy prosecutor-general. Major-crime field forensic work will be handed to the SCIA, while the Public Prosecution Service will focus on cross-examination of evidence and evidence preservation needed to decide on indictments and maintain prosecutions.
The review was announced shortly after the issue was raised in the political arena. Rebuilding Korea Party lawmaker Park Eun-jung called on Friday for the project to be halted, writing on social media that "the prosecutors, who will have no investigative powers, must stop squatting on a 57.4 billion won new building."
A construction bid notice from the Seoul Regional Public Procurement Service that Park made public showed that a bid opening for the NDFC expansion had already been scheduled. Park criticized the rush to expand the facility by hundreds of billions of won just as its forensic functions were about to be transferred to the SCIA.
With the ministry now set to revisit the project from scratch, the scope and scale of any NDFC expansion are expected to be decided anew based on how functions and personnel are ultimately divided between the Public Prosecution Service and the SCIA.
jookapooka@heraldcorp.com
