Coupang interim CEO Harold Rogers speaks throughout a listening to on the Nationwide Meeting in Seoul, Dec. 31. 2025. Yonhap
Korea’s “exit ban,” a sweeping device used to cease suspects from leaving the nation, is coming underneath mounting scrutiny.
Lengthy seen as a cornerstone of investigative authority, the system is now underneath assault each as an instrument of arbitrary state overreach and a system riddled with gaps that seems to spare well-connected figures, together with a Seoul metropolis councilor underneath investigation for corruption and the performing head of one of many nation’s largest on-line retailers.
Current lapses involving Kim Kyung, the town councilor accused of bribery, and Coupang’s interim CEO Harold Rogers, have uncovered a systemic double bind: Authorities are more and more decried as being heavy-handed with odd suspects, but indulgent towards the highly effective.
Police, who’re behind the 30 p.c rise in ban requests since 2020, face mounting strain to reform. Critics argue the “ban-first” tradition has develop into a default tactic moderately than a final resort, at the same time as high-profile figures proceed to slide by way of the cracks.
Nonetheless, consultants word such incidents are the exception and that extra typically, exit bans have been criticized for his or her extreme use moderately than their absence.
In separate instances, the previous Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport Received Hee-ryong and former Individuals Energy Get together chief Han Dong-hoon have been every banned from journey for months by particular counsels investigating unrelated scandals, however have been by no means summoned for questioning. Han’s case was later concluded with no prices, triggering criticism that the journey ban was used as a refined intimidation tactic moderately than a safeguard towards his precise departure.
Authorized transparency can also be underneath scrutiny. In 2024, 51.2 p.c of the prosecution’s exit bans and 32.7 p.c of police bans weren’t instantly disclosed to these affected, citing the “covert nature of investigations.” Some people reportedly found their restricted standing solely at airport checkpoints.
The dearth of exterior oversight additional fuels considerations. Solely 0.8 p.c of appeals towards exit bans have been authorised in 2023.
As the federal government pushes broader judicial reforms, authorized consultants are calling for parallel revisions to the exit ban system. Pending payments on the Nationwide Meeting search to require investigators to justify bans extra clearly and shorten notification delays to 1 month.
The proposed revision would require investigators to tell apart between suspects and witnesses, mandate justification for every request, impose limits on period and extension, shorten non-notification intervals to 1 month and institutionalize each an impartial overview committee and appeals course of to stop indefinite or arbitrary bans.
Kim Dae-geun, a analysis fellow on the Korean Institute of Criminology and Authorized Coverage, mentioned the system may “excessively prohibit the constitutional proper to freedom of residence and motion.”
He added that “with no limits on the variety of extension requests, the system permits extended restrictions with out efficient oversight,” and famous that having the justice ministry each impose and overview exit bans “undermines equity and objectivity.”
