Only $195 recovered from 'Doctor's Room' operator Cho Ju-bin in 5 years as crime-proceeds clawback rate stays below 1%

Five years after the Supreme Court handed down a final ruling against Cho Ju-bin, the operator of the Telegram sexual exploitation chatroom known as "Doctor's Room," prosecutors have recovered just 260,000 won ($195) of the surcharges imposed on him. The government's overall crime-proceeds clawback rate has remained below 1 percent every year.

Data obtained by Rebuilding Korea Party lawmaker Park Eun-jung of the National Assembly's Legislation and Judiciary Committee from the Ministry of Justice showed that prosecutors have recovered only 260,000 won from Cho, who was sentenced to 42 years in prison by the Supreme Court in 2021 on sexual exploitation charges related to the "Doctor's Room" chatroom.

The government's overall surcharge recovery rate has stayed in the fraction-of-a-percent range. Ministry of Justice data showed that as of August this year, prosecutors had collected 90.3 billion won in surcharges out of a total 34.1 trillion won subject to enforcement — a recovery rate of just 0.27 percent, below last year's 0.42 percent. The rate stood at 0.39 percent in 2021, 0.32 percent in 2022, 0.33 percent in 2023 and 0.48 percent in 2024. The ministry attributed the low figures to the large share of cases involving "punitive surcharges" — high-value orders that are effectively impossible to enforce.

As of August, the largest outstanding surcharge belonged to a person identified only as "A," who received a final guilty verdict in 2005 in connection with accounting fraud at Daewoo Group. Of the 23.04 trillion won subject to enforcement, 22.95 trillion won — 98.2 percent — remains unpaid. Among the 30 individuals with the highest unpaid surcharges, 10 have gone more than a decade since their verdicts became final, with their combined unpaid total reaching 23.79 trillion won.

More than 20 billion won in surcharges becomes unrecoverable each year due to the death of the convicted person or the expiration of the statute of limitations. The total written off as unrecoverable was 35.7 billion won in 2021, 24.8 billion won in 2022, 24.4 billion won in 2023, 36 billion won in 2024 and 32 billion won in 2025. As of August this year, 15.1 billion won had already been written off — 11.2 billion won due to the death of the convicted person and 3.7 billion won due to the expiration of the statute of limitations.

A surcharge is a criminal sanction imposed when assets obtained through crime cannot be confiscated directly, requiring the equivalent value to be collected instead. Unlike fines, surcharges carry weaker enforcement mechanisms and limited legal tools for recovery, and the rules allowing detention in a labor facility do not apply to them.