Public Services
Korean Judiciary’s official website is being operated to promote court activities and provide case information through the Internet. Korean Judiciary’s official website address is www.scourt.go.kr with daily number of about 100,000 users visiting the website on average. This website has four menus including Introduction of the Judiciary, the Supreme Court, Courts of Each Instance and Service to the Public. Each website of the Supreme Court and courts of each instance provides services such as introduction of the court, major court decision, and notices. In particular, the menu of Service to the Public provides various services such as search of cases, court decisions, comprehensive legal information system all kinds of notices, application for providing information, etc. under the six menus of News, Judgment, Notice, Information, Participation, Resources to function as a major channel of communication with the public. Easy accessibility to the website for visually impaired people, hearing-impaired people, and other marginalized people information-wise were taken into consideration. A website for children was separately established to introduce children about jobs of the court, types of trials and procedures. Pictures and fun quizzes also make court’s image, often felt difficult to many people, rather friendly. Websites for each level of courts provide similar services. English website(www.scourt.go.kr/eng) for foreigners and mobile site for smart phone users are also being separately operated.
Self-represented Litigation homepage (http://pro-se.scourt.go.kr) is a website which provides a self-represented litigant with information necessary for filing a self-represented case without the help of a representative or certified judicial scrivener. The homepage carries detailed information on trial procedures and on ways to respond to the claims of the counterparty. Also, the homepage allows downloading of required document forms and provides guidelines for filling out required documents for a lawsuit. The self-represented litigant can easily compose trial documents in electronic forms through this website and the registered information is reusable by the courts. The homepage provides services to six kinds of monetary claim cases (loan, wage, sales payment, lease deposit, contracted payment, transferred payment), which form a majority number of the civil cases involving merit on April 26, 2010. The homepage also extended its service to the six types of claims such as invoice claims for goods, invoice claims for construction, promissory note claims, damage claims, monetary claim for a check and building delivery claims on May 2,2011.
An individual who wishes to participate in the real property auction of the court may obtain necessary information online through logging on to www.courtauction.go.kr. This system provides the schedule and details of the auction cases via the Internet and photographs concerned and location of the property through reading a map. This is linked with Case Management System, Bailiffs Consolidated System and Internet Register Office System.
Comprehensive Legal Information System (CLIS) is an information search system that enables people to search precedents of the Supreme Court and lower courts, legislation of the Republic of Korea, Supreme Court rules, internal rules, and regulations, and legal literature quickly and precisely. People can search up-to-date legal information through its intelligent search engine. Equipped with database based on XML(eXtensible Markup Language) technology, the system shares information with the Ministry of Government Legislation and the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea.
Currently, about 80,000 Supreme Court precedents, about 50,000 lower courts decisions, and about 3,000 Constitutional Court rulings are in the system, and all the laws of the Republic of Korea including the Constitution, legislation, treaties, and its implementing ordinances are provided to users for free.
CLIS features include: first, Hyper Link is available that connects information on precedents, legislation, and legal literature each other organically; second, it provides up-to-date legal information including recent precedents quickly and precisely, linked to internal written judgment management system; and third, the system makes public access to legal information search easier by providing Legal Thesaurus and query auto complete function.
A person who wants to read a written judgment can apply for reading the written judgment of the Supreme Court or lower courts, either by visiting a court or through Korean Judiciary’s official website.
The Supreme Court preserves all the written judgments over the country with the support of internal judicial affair system called ‘Written Judgment Management System’, and based on the system, the Court enables people to read judgments. For the protection of personal information and the privacy of interested parties, the Court provides the written judgments for the public with personal information eliminated.
On the other hand, in accordance with the revision of Criminal Procedure Law and Civil Procedure Law, the written judgment of criminal cases and civil cases is available through the Internet in 2013 and in 2015 respectively. The public can search and read judgments easily via the Internet System without additional application.
However, even in this case, judgments will be released after the process of elimination of personal information for the protection of privacy. Also, if the content of a case is inappropriate to open to the public, the Court may not disclose the judgment.
Registration System(RS) computerizes paper-based registry records and manages registry information electronically. To improve public service and to reduce economic and societal costs, the Supreme Court of Korea promoted computerization of RS. The system is composed of two parts: the Computerized System for Registry Work, to provide clerical assistance to the registry office and Internet Registry Office for the general users.
After the establishment of the major development plan in 1990 and the implementation of this plan, the services provided under the Computerized System for Registry Work finally began in 1998. The development of the next generation registry system began in 2003 and provided its service based on the current web basis in 2007. Also, registration service through the Internet was launched in 2007. The website is www.iros.go.kr. Information technology for RS allowed efficient work management for the registry officers and enabled the provision of the service of reading and issuing of the registry record, without limitation of the registered regions.
RS has been certified with the recognition of achieving Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) Level 4 since 2002 and International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 2000 since 2006. Furthermore, on September 2010, RS received CMMI Level 5 certification (an internationally recognized standard certification), and through this, the Korean Judiciary became the 6th public agency in the world to have received such certification. This shows that the Korean judiciary has the world’s best information technology and will continuously enhance the quality of the public services.
On-line registry service eliminated the inconvenience for civil petitioners who had to physically go to the court registry, and instead allowed them to access registry records through the Internet at home. Especially after the launch of the online application for registry on June 2006, approximately 7,200 cases related to 82 categories of real property registration (including conservation of ownership, creation of mortgage) and all the registry types of legal entity (including its establishment and change of the representative) have been filed on a daily basis.
Other than those services, at courts and registry offices across the nation, about 500 automated self-service machines issuing certified or abridged copies of real property registration records have been installed for the convenience of civil petitioners. This enables the public to acquire the necessary documents without the help of court officials. Thus, about 1,500 automated self-service machines are placed in local government buildings, which allow civil petitioners to acquire the necessary documents without having to visit the registry office.
To comply with the social demand for a revised definition of "family relations system," Korean Civil Law was revised accordingly and as a result, Family Relations Registration System replaced the existing patriarchal family system starting on January 2008. Prior to the revision of the law, the Family Relations Registration Information System development project launched in April 2006 to prepare for the new family registration system and in 2008, the Family Relations Registration Information Systems went into the public service.
Family Relations Registration Information System allows complete computerization of the registration procedure, providing efficiency to the staff members of the family relations registration division. Furthermore, the system enables civil petitioners to report their cases, read certificates or be issued with family registration documents at any branch of the family relations registration office, thus eventually saving economic and societal costs.
The new system also maximized the protection of individual privacy. It is designed to minimize disclosing of individual information by being able to produce five different types of documents including family relation certificate, standard certificate, and marriage relation certificate according to an individual’s needs, while the certified or abridged copies of existing family register unnecessarily reveal individual information as the private information of all the family members are stated in the family register.
Currently, the reading and issuance of family relations certificates have been served more than 100,000 times per day. Also, certificates can be issued without the aid of court officers through about 1,000 automated certificate machines in local governments and public offices throughout the country.
With the establishment of online family registration system (http://efamily.scourt.go.kr) in 2013, the family relations certificates are viewed and issued online. Since July 31, 2014, the judiciary also began online self-registrations for court-approved changing of person’s name, making family names for newly immigrated Koreans and family relations registration, and self-revision of family relations, enabling the public to process their family relations registration in a more convenient way.
The website for electronic deposit (http://ekt.scourt.go.kr) provides various deposit-related information such as deposit system, deposit procedure, deposit-related laws, all kinds of forms, search of deposit cases, etc.
From December 17, 2012, electronic deposit system was adopted and implemented for cases regarding deposit of cash. For such cases, application for deposit, claim for payment of the deposit, claim for recovery of the deposit (cases limited to a deposit less than 50million won), viewing of documents and proof of fact, etc. can all be handled online through the Internet.
