Labor inspectors breaking free from prosecutors' oversight — only 17 hold law or labor consultant licenses

As prosecutorial oversight of labor inspectors is set to be abolished Friday, only 17 of the country's labor inspectors hold a license as an attorney or certified labor attorney, newly released data show.

The country's eight regional labor offices have just 32 digital forensics specialists combined, raising concerns that inspectors will need to significantly bolster their legal support and evidence analysis capabilities to conduct independent investigations.

According to data submitted to People Power Party lawmaker Kim Wi-sang of the National Assembly's Climate, Energy, Environment and Labor Committee by the Ministry of Employment and Labor, the total authorized headcount of labor inspectors — combining workplace inspectors and industrial safety inspectors — stood at 5,131 as of Aug. 31.

Of those, only 17 hold a license as an attorney or certified labor attorney, representing 0.33 percent of the total. Just four are dedicated attorneys.

Labor inspectors serve as special judicial police under the Ministry of Employment and Labor, investigating violations of labor laws covering wage theft and industrial safety. Their jurisdiction spans 19 statutes and 1,022 individual provisions.

Until now, inspectors have operated under prosecutorial direction at every stage — from filing charges and questioning suspects to conducting searches and seizures and transferring cases. Once the revised Code of Criminal Procedure takes effect Friday, however, prosecutors will no longer direct special judicial police investigations. That shift is expected to make the inspectors' own investigative management systems and legal support all the more critical.

Staffing for digital evidence analysis is equally thin. The 32 digital forensics specialists deployed across the eight regional labor offices are responsible for extracting evidence from electronic data seized during workplace raids, a task that demands both trained personnel and specialized equipment — making the need to strengthen investigative capacity a pressing challenge.

However, the share of inspectors holding professional licenses alone does not fully reflect the investigative expertise of the labor inspector corps as a whole. The figures reflect only the number of credentialed personnel and are distinct from indicators of investigative experience or training completion.

The Ministry of Employment and Labor plans to respond by building a three-tier investigative management system that includes cooperation with prosecutors. Under the structure, team leaders and section chiefs will handle day-to-day investigative direction on individual cases, agency heads will oversee and coordinate investigations overall, and prosecutors will provide legal advice and coordination support.

Moves are also afoot in the National Assembly to restore prosecutorial direction over special judicial police. Kim plans to introduce a bill Thursday to amend the Code of Criminal Procedure that would require special judicial police to seek prosecutorial direction for all investigations and to follow that direction when given.

Kim said abolishing advance prosecutorial direction over special judicial police risks weakening investigative expertise and oversight mechanisms. He said the intent of the bill is to restore prosecutorial direction in order to ensure professional standards and legal control in specialized investigations, while protecting the independence and impartiality of those investigations from undue outside interference.