Cases taking over 3 months in summary criminal procedure jump 2.5-fold in 5 years, lawmaker says

By Jung Seok-jun, The Herald Business

The summary criminal procedure — designed to resolve minor cases quickly — is losing its purpose as processing times grow longer, a lawmaker said Tuesday.

Data obtained from the Supreme Court by the office of People Power Party lawmaker Yoo Sang-bum show that the number of summary criminal cases filed rose only about 7.4 percent over five years, from 381,073 in 2021 to 409,281 in 2025. By contrast, the number of cases taking more than three months to process jumped roughly 2.5-fold over the same period, from 61,771 to 157,460.

The share of delayed cases — those exceeding the three-month mark — jumped from 16.1 percent of all processed cases in 2021 to 38.3 percent in 2025. Over the same period, cases resolved within one month fell from 135,275 to 55,336, and the average processing time stretched from 1.9 months to 2.8 months.

The summary criminal procedure, governed by Article 448 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, allows relatively minor cases — such as assault and other offenses likely to result in fines, penalties or forfeiture — to be handled through written review alone, without a formal trial. Under Article 171 of the Rules of Criminal Procedure, courts are expected to resolve such cases within 14 days, but that standard is a non-binding directive with no enforcement mechanism.

Critics say the chronic backlog and growing workload across the court system have created a serious structural bottleneck even in summary proceedings — cases that should be resolved fastest — effectively stripping the procedure of its original function as a vehicle for swift legal relief.

"The summary criminal procedure exists to handle minor cases quickly, yet the number of cases taking more than three months has jumped 2.5-fold in five years — a clear sign that the system itself is being rendered ineffective," Yoo said.

He added that the trend was "a serious warning signal of excessive case backlog across the entire court system," and called on the courts to analyze the causes of the delays and immediately put in place effective measures to restore public trust in the judicial service.