Open Decision Ledger · Criminal & investigative procedure
Methods of Adjudicating Quasi-Appeals Seeking Revocation of Dispositions at Each Stage After the Conclusion of Search and Seizure of Electronic Information, and the Standard of Materiality of the Illegality
Translated from the Korean original. Read the Korean
Supreme Court, Oct. 15, 2015, 2013Mo1969 (ruling)
No holding summary · checked against points at issue. The official text publishes no summary of the holding for this decision. The quotation and factors in this record are copied verbatim from the points at issue; the evidence for each axis is taken from the points at issue, the order and the reasons.
Case name: 준항고일부인용결정에대한재항고
Official text on the National Law Information Center
Question
After the search and seizure of electronic information has been entirely concluded, if the quasi-appellant seeks revocation of the individual disposition at each stage, may the court hearing the quasi-appeal revoke only that stage?
Holding
Absent special circumstances, the court must not divide the process into stages but must regard the entire search and seizure process as a single Procedure, and must determine whether revocation is warranted according to whether the illegality is serious enough to render the Procedure as a whole unlawful. The Supreme Court held that the failure to guarantee the right to participate during the file conversion and decryption work on the copies cannot be regarded as lawful, but that it was not serious enough to render the Procedure as a whole unlawful.
Points at issue, verbatim
당해 압수·수색 과정 전체를 하나의 절차로 파악하여 그 과정에서 나타난 위법이 압수·수색 절차 전체를 위법하게 할 정도로 중대한지에 따라 전체적으로 압수·수색 처분을 취소할 것인지를 가려야 하는지 여부
Unofficial English translation
whether the court should grasp the entire process of the search and seizure as a single procedure and determine whether the search and seizure disposition should be revoked in its entirety depending on whether the illegality appearing in that process is serious enough to render the entire search and seizure procedure unlawful
Disposition
Reversed and rendered by the Supreme Court Stated in the decision
파기하고, 이 부분 준항고를 기각한다.
Unofficial English translation
reversed, and the quasi-appeal as to that part is dismissed.
Form of the test
Circumstances weighed Stated in the decision
위반한 절차조항의 취지, 전체과정 중에서 위반행위가 발생한 과정의 중요도, 그 위반사항에 의한 법익침해 가능성의 경중 등을 종합하여 판단하여야 한다
Unofficial English translation
must be determined by comprehensively considering the purport of the procedural provision violated, the importance of the stage of the entire process in which the violating act occurred, and the severity of the possibility of infringement of legally protected interests caused by such violation
Factors
- 현장에서의 저장매체 압수·이미징·탐색·복제 및 출력행위 등 일련의 행위
- 압수·수색이 종료된 이후
- 각 단계의 개별 처분의 취소를 구하는 준항고
- 위법의 중대성을 판단하는 기준
Unofficial English translation
• a series of acts such as the seizure, imaging, examination, duplication, and printing out of storage media at the scene
• after the search and seizure was completed
• a quasi-appeal seeking the revocation of the individual disposition at each stage
• the criteria for judging the gravity of the illegality
Relation to precedent
Follows earlier decisions Stated in the decision
대법원 2015. 7. 16.자 2011모1839 전원합의체 결정
Unofficial English translation
Supreme Court en banc Decision 2011Mo1839, July 16, 2015
Decisions referred to
대법원 2015. 7. 16.자 2011모1839 전원합의체 결정(공2015하, 1274)
Burden of proof
Not addressed Not in the decision
Open question and revisit condition
What constitutes the special circumstances permitting stage-by-stage determination, and how would the determination of materiality change if the right to participate had been excluded at the search stage itself?
This reading will be re-examined if Articles 215 or 417 of the Criminal Procedure Act or the provisions concerning the right to participate in search and seizure of electronic information are amended, or if the legal principle of the en banc decision 2011Mo1839 is changed.
Cross-family AI independent reading & axis check
8 of 8 axes matched GPT-6 Astra (OpenAI, codex CLI) · 2026-10-16
A comparison with an independent reading by another family of AI (GPT-6 Astra), which read only the original text without seeing the initial reading, showed that all eight axes matched.
Raw responses and comparison record: Protocol · Blind readings (JSONL) · Axis comparison (JSONL) · SHA-256 (JSON)
Lower-court contrast & scope of application
Lower-court reading vs. Supreme Court holding
Lower-court context: The court below (Seoul Central District Court, Decision 2012Bo6) revoked, isolating only that stage, the conduct of the respondents to the quasi-appeal in performing file conversion and decryption work on copies of the server hard disk, without notifying the suspect or defense counsel of the time and place and without participation, from May 25, 2012 to May 30, 2012.
Supreme Court standard: The Supreme Court held that, although that work cannot be regarded as lawful because it did not guarantee the right to participate, weighing together the fact that opportunities to participate were guaranteed in the remainder of the process, the fact that the original server had already been returned so that the concern about distortion of the information was slight, the fact that the warrant contained no entry regarding the right to participate in the subsequent process and there was no indication of an intent to exclude participation, and the fact that it was merely a preparatory stage of the search, the illegality was not serious enough to render the Procedure as a whole unlawful. It reversed the court below, which had revoked only that isolated stage, for misapprehension of legal principles, and itself dismissed the quasi-appeal.
Distinguishing conditions
- Where the search and seizure has not yet been concluded, so that revocation of a disposition at a particular stage would have the practical benefit of halting the subsequent search and seizure
- Where the exclusion of the right to participate occurred at the stage of searching for and outputting the information related to the allegation itself, or occurred before the original was returned, so that the concern about destruction of the information is substantial
- Where the warrant expressly provided for the guarantee of the right to participate in the subsequent process, or the investigative authority's intent to exclude participation is revealed
Record verification notes
Before asserting the same conclusion, it needs to be checked from the Records whether the violation was limited to the preparatory stage of the search, whether opportunities to participate were actually guaranteed at other stages, and whether integrity was secured by, among other things, hash value verification.
From the official text
Points at issue
전자정보에 대한 압수·수색 과정에서 이루어진 현장에서의 저장매체 압수·이미징·탐색·복제 및 출력행위 등 일련의 행위가 모두 진행되어 압수·수색이 종료된 이후 전체 압수·수색 과정을 단계적·개별적으로 구분하여 각 단계의 개별 처분의 취소를 구하는 준항고가 있는 경우, 당해 압수·수색 과정 전체를 하나의 절차로 파악하여 그 과정에서 나타난 위법이 압수·수색 절차 전체를 위법하게 할 정도로 중대한지에 따라 전체적으로 압수·수색 처분을 취소할 것인지를 가려야 하는지 여부(원칙적 적극) 및 이때 위법의 중대성을 판단하는 기준
Unofficial English translation
Where, in the course of search and seizure of electronic information, a series of acts—such as the seizure, imaging, examination, duplication, and printing out of storage media at the scene—were all carried out and the search and seizure was completed, and a quasi-appeal seeking the revocation of the individual disposition at each stage is filed by distinguishing the entire process of search and seizure into stages and individual acts, whether the court should grasp the entire process of the search and seizure as a single procedure and determine whether the search and seizure disposition should be revoked in its entirety depending on whether the illegality appearing in that process is serious enough to render the entire search and seizure procedure unlawful (principle (affirmative)), and the criteria for judging the gravity of the illegality in that case
Summary of the holding
The official text publishes no summary of the holding for this decision. The quotation and factors in this record are copied verbatim from the points at issue; the evidence for each axis is taken from the points at issue, the order and the reasons.
Order
원심결정 중 피준항고인들의 행위를 취소한 부분을 파기하고, 이 부분 준항고를 기각한다.
Unofficial English translation
The part of the order of the court below that revoked the acts of the respondents to the quasi-appeal is reversed, and the quasi-appeal as to that part is dismissed.
Provisions referred to
형사소송법 제215조, 제417조
Read 2026-10-16 · Cross-read 2026-10-16. All quotes matched against the official text. The Chinese-character placeholders the court used for anonymised parties are given in their Korean readings, and parenthetical Chinese-character glosses are omitted.
Every entry is published only after all quotes have been matched character by character against the official text, and audited by an independent second reading from a different model family across all eight axes. Both agreed axes and text-grounded interpretive divergences are recorded openly. The ledger is a research record, not an assessment of the court or advice on any matter.
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