Background
Our client invested a total of KRW 485,180,000 in 43 transfers between August 2020 and June 2021, after being promised a monthly return of 5% on a fabric export business and repayment of principal at any time. Law Firm Changchun filed a fraud complaint against the person who took the money.
In August 2022, the police closed the case without referral, citing insufficient evidence. To decide the next step, the client needed to know how the suspect had explained himself to investigators. In February 2023, Changchun asked the local police chief to disclose the suspect's interrogation record, excluding resident registration numbers, addresses and other personal data. The police refused disclosure in full, citing privacy.
What Was at Stake
The Official Information Disclosure Act allows an agency to withhold personal information whose disclosure may infringe privacy. Case law extends this to statements in investigation records, not just identifiers. The question was whether this suspect's statements fell into that category.
How Changchun Helped
Acting as the complainant's representative, Changchun sued to revoke the refusal. The court accepted the following points:
Identifiers were already excluded. The request itself carved out resident registration numbers, workplace, address and contact details.
The statements were already known. The suspect claimed that someone else had lied and that he, too, had been deceived. He had raised the same defense in the client's civil damages suit, so the court found nothing that deserved protection as private.
Outcome
In April 2024, the first-instance court revoked the refusal except for the names of investors other than our client. Because the police had refused even the disclosable parts, the court ordered the police chief to bear all litigation costs. The judgment became final in April 2024.
Closed investigation records cannot be withheld wholesale merely because they contain personal data. Narrowing a request to exclude identifiers can open the way to the statements a complainant needs. (Outcomes depend on the facts of each case.)