The court has ruled to release the details of prosecutors’ budgets, revealing how President Yoon Suk Yeol spent tax on special activity expenses for confidential investigation during his time as the chief of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office and Prosecutor General. Newstapa drew this first ruling ever on the disclosure of prosecutors’ budgets, three years and five months after filing a lawsuit with civil organizations. On April 13, the 2nd Division of the Supreme Court of Korea confirmed the original ruling in favor of Newstapa and civic groups to discontinue the proceeding, ordering the prosecutors’ offices of all levels to open the details of their budget. Discontinuance of a trial refers to a system that confirms a ruling without hearing an appeal when there is no problem with the original ruling.

The budget information to be disclosed by the prosecutors’ office according to the Supreme Court’s ruling includes (1) special activity expenses (2) specific business expenses (3) details on business promotion expenses and the evidence of expenditures (expense report, documents of approval, cash receipt, credit card receipt, account statement, and tax invoice) from January 2017 to September 2019. The court dismissed the prosecution’s claims on non-disclosure of information in both the first trial (sentenced on Jan 11, 2022) and the second trial (sentenced on Dec 15, 2022), ruling in favor of Newstapa and the civil organizations. However, the prosecutors’ office did not accept the result of the trials and appealed to the Supreme Court in January this year, repeating their claims that ‘it is difficult to organize (budget information), and we cannot disclose the data.’

Nevertheless, the Supreme Court “dismissed all the prosecution’s appeals,” stating that “they do not contain the reasons included in Article 4, Paragraph 1 in [Special Act on Appellate Procedures]” and that there was no need for a further trial. On November 18, 2019, 1,243 days ago, Newstapa and civil organizations filed an administrative lawsuit against the prosecutors’ office, demanding the disclosure of the details of special activity expenses.