Justice never sleeps, literally; Judges’ grueling work hours ― key to how Korean courts handle heavy workload

2014-02-17 18:10

Justice never sleeps, literally

Judges’ grueling work hours ― key to how Korean courts handle heavy workload
By Kim Da-ye
More than 6 million lawsuits are filed every year across all courts in Korea, which together employ some 2,500 judges.
The Korean Supreme Court received 35,777 new cases and handled more than 36,200 in 2012. Although data for direct comparison isn’t available, over 7,700 cases were filed in the U.S. Supreme Court in the 2011 term ending in October 2012. Seventy-nine cases were argued and 73 were disposed.
The Korean courts’ efficient handling of the enormous workload has no magic formula, but relies heavily on judges who work extraordinarily long hours.
Judges have long been regarded as the creme de la creme among the elite in Korean society. The best and brightest among those who have passed the bar exam and graduated from the state-run Judicial Research and Training Institute often choose to become judges rather than prosecutors or lawyers.
The Korea Times spent a day last Thursday at the 13th department of the Seoul Administrative Court where powerful decisions on suits filed against the state are made. It was a rare chance for a glance at judges’ daily life, challenges and what motivates them to work their grueling hours.
Morning
Judges usually arrive at work between 9 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. On Feb. 13, when this reporter joined the 13th department, the court started earlier than usual with the inauguration ceremony for the new chief of the administrative court, Choi Wan-joo. Choi emphasized the importance of communication with the public. “Good judges try to put themselves in petitioners’ shoes,” he said.
The ceremony ended after about 20 minutes, and judges rushed back to their offices to change for their morning hearings, that begin at 10 a.m. They wore their official silver ties and put on their black and purple robes.
As soon as the presiding judge and two associate judges of the department sat down in the courtroom, hearings began. Presiding Judge Ban Jung-woo leads hearings, and the associate judges write drafts of rulings, which Ban edits and approves.
Ban let plaintiffs and defendants do most of the talking. He occasionally asked questions with a subtle smile in order to clarify inconsistencies or request further evidence.
“I don’t talk before they do. If their arguments are consistent with what I understood from the documents they handed in, I don’t need to ask many questions,” the presiding judge said later in an interview.
“I find it rewarding when I listen to their stories and explain things to them.”
Each hearing lasts five to 10 minutes. The 16-seat public gallery is only half-full. After each hearing, the head judges calls for the next hearing’s attendants. Some aren’t here yet, and some hurriedly arrive apparently with little preparation.
The gallery used to be full when the court scheduled hearings in one-hour or half-hour units. To make court a friendlier place, hearings are now scheduled every 10 or 20 minutes, and judges often wait for attendants to arrive.
The relatively quiet morning session had a somewhat dramatic ending. A former senior culture ministry official who was fired over keeping money the ministry had mistakenly paid him asked the court to cancel his dismissal. He admitted the charges but said he didn’t have bad intentions. He knelt down and pled for mercy.
Lunch
Lunchtime usually starts at 11:40 a.m. Most judges head to the cafeteria and finish their meals in 30 minutes to get back to work.
The lunch break on Feb. 13 wasn’t an ordinary one. Many judges including Kim Jin-ha, an associate judge at the 13th department, found out their next posts during the lunch break.
Judges are transferred to a different position in a different court every two years. Kim is moving to a southern province and is excited about working independently as a single judge.
“Associate judges stay quiet during hearings, and want to eventually lead hearings on their own and communicate directly with people,” Kim said.
The possibility of moving to a different region every few years is a fact of life for judges. It can be particularly hard for married judges with children who may be forced to live apart from their families.
Many judges find it difficult to separate their private lives from their professions. When his lawyer friends ask to have a lunch together, Kim becomes cautious about its potential influence on his future rulings. A family member recently asked him to send a flower to an acquaintance with his name and title. He refused.
Afternoon
At 1:55 p.m., the three judges came back to the courtroom and announced the rulings for 21 cases in five minutes.
At 2 p.m., the hearings began again. The hearings in the afternoon lasted up to an hour with examination of witnesses.
The longest hearing of the day was a refugee case that started at 5 p.m. A 30-year-old Malian applied for refugee status, but the immigration office rejected his application. He brought the case to the court to stay in Korea.
The Malian claimed that he married a Christian and his father, a Muslim imam, threatened to honor-kill him. He fled home in 2007, and has lived away from his wife who later sought asylum in France.
Korea is the first Asian country with its own Refugee Law, which was enacted in July. Any court can hear refugee cases, but most of them are processed at the Seoul Administrative Court.
Evening
Hearings are held two days a week, and judges spend the rest of the time writing rulings.
Each associate judge handles four cases a week. He or she consults the presiding judge and the other associate judge helps to reach an agreement and write a draft of a ruling.
“While many people wonder if judges read thousands og pages of all submitted documents, they do, although they have to skim through much of them,” said an associate judge.
Writing one ruling a day on average, judges end up staying until late, sometimes past midnight.
Back at home, some cases won’t leave their head and don’t let them fall asleep.
For Ban, they are the cases that draw intense interest from the media. One recent example was a lawsuit regarding the accuracy of a question in last year’s College Scholastic Ability Test.
The question asked students to compare the gross domestic product (GDP) of the European Union and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) trading block without specifying the period for comparison. A group of students filed a complaint with the court, and Ban’s department dismissed it.
“When a case gets a nationwide attention, I get to think about that only. Even while I am eating, drinking and talking to people at a dinner meeting,” Ban said.
For Kim, cases that can potentially influence the way the government works come across as burdens, especially when there have been many similar cases but no preceding ruling by the court.
Kim said he once talked in his sleep while trying to reach an agreement with the presiding judge in his dream.
Judges do not get paid overtime because they are senior government officials from the very moment they are appointed. In Korea, some newly appointed judges are in their late 20s as those who have passed the bar exam and graduated from the state-run training institute can become judges without having to work as lawyers.
The starting salary for judges is high, compared to those for other government officials, but increases slowly. By the time judges reach their mid-40s, many decide to leave and move onto law firms.
Under the “privileges of former post” tradition, retired judges and prosecutors used to be given an advantage in their first trial after leaving the courts or the prosecution. The tradition is weakening as a new law bans judges from taking a case in the courts they used to work at for a year after their retirement.
The new law has also forced some judges to stay in the courts and continue working long hours.
Many judges, however, remain in the legal profession, coping with the heavy workload and relatively low pay, because of a sense of duty.
Ban is one of them. He says he “hopes his eyes stay healthy” so that he can continue reading documents.
“See the thickness of the documents piled up there and imagine you have to read them all. You’ve got to have good vision,” the judge said, pointing at his cabinet.
Kim also likes his job as a judge. He finds it rewarding when he makes a ruling that protects minorities and brings significance to cases that others overlooked.
This reporter left the court building around 9 p.m. The lights were off in the lobby and corridors. From the outside, however, faint light emerged from many windows.