Supreme Court of Korea has started working on a next electronic case filing system. In order to implement a digital court environment, it is going to establish a system based on big data analysis and introduce cloud infrastructures. It is also going to establish regional database (DB) infrastructures by combining dispersed DB on judicial affairs.
South Korea’s systems on judicial affairs and electronic case filing have not gone through a huge change since 1999. As a result, these systems are facing many limitations such as level of complexity and deterioration.
◊South Korean Government to invest $215 million into building a next electronic case filing system
This project involving building a next electronic case filing system is set up to expand judicial access by applying latest ICTs (Information Communication Technology). It is so-called Smart Court 4.0 Project. According to National Court Administration’s plan, about $215 million (250 billion KRW) will be invested for the next electronic case filing system to be implemented starting from 2024.
A group that will carry forward the project was established and it is going to start converting the current system into a next system on full-scale starting from this year. There are currently 95 judicial affairs and electronic case filing systems that are operating sporadically. Because there are hundreds of call relationships between systems, errors are frequent and it is also difficult to resolve causes of these errors.
In order to prevent Supreme Court of Korea’s homepage for electronic case filing, file size is limited to 10Mbyte and it is causing many civil complaints by litigants.
Supreme Court of Korea set up a group that will carry forward Smart Court 4.0 Project within National Court Administration in last October. It formed a council and had collected opinions from six high courts in South Korea. The group will start designing the next electronic case filing system that is expected to be ready by 2024.
First, the system will be based on cloud in order to minimize any error with electronic case filing service. The focus is set on maximizing people’s level of convenience by quickly distributing large electronic documents. Old structure of judicial affairs systems will be improved as well. The group will combine similar functions, provide a unified screen, and combine various civil complaint websites that are operated individually. It will implement an expanded service by establishing a unified authentication system. To achieve these goals, Supreme Court of Korea selected 4 major strategies and 13 sub-projects.
These 4 major strategies include innovation of an open judicial information system, spread of demonstrational services centered on the people, innovation of intelligent case management-based judicial affairs, and reorganization of IT structure to implement digital courts.
Smart Court 4.0 Project will greatly reduce number of documents required for electronic case filing that is currently very complicated. Supreme Court of Korea is planning to allow electronic case documents to be connected to each other through a judicial information sharing center when the current electronic case filing method requires a person to scan issued documents and submit them.
Supreme Court of Korea is also going to commercialize a mobile electronic case filing service as well. Mobile service will be more advanced in the future so that it will be able to perform every function that the internet service will be able to perform.

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◊Many innovative digital technologies to be used for the project
Supreme Court of Korea is going to apply latest technologies such as AI and big data in order to make the next electronic case filing system more advanced. First, it is planning to completely innovate its trial support service tool through an intelligent comprehensive knowledge search. Through AI technology, the tool will understand the intent of one’s question and find and provide identical sentencing, precedent, and information on legislations. Supreme Court of Korea is going go combine comprehensive legal information, sentencing search system, and open legal knowledge encyclopedia into an AI-based intelligent comprehensive search portal.
Supreme Court of Korea is also going to apply an intelligent interactive UHD service that will automatically provide answers towards inquiries about systems or questions about errors. Chatbots will take over roles that are currently carried out by the judicial branch’s UHD advisors.
Big data analysis system will also be introduced to implement digital court environment.
In order to increase amount of data that can be used for big data analysis, Supreme Court of Korea is going to expand e-form use of official documents that are submitted electronically and introduce OCR (Optical Character Recognition) process system. It is also planning to introduce data analysis related to electronic case filing and visual services. Business support system will also be changed so that every regional database can be inquired.
In addition, it is going to introduce cloud-based infrastructure architecture in order to process large data and prepare a groundwork for distribution of electronic documents.
◊Supreme Court of Korea to focus on having the project to be used for positive purposes
Some have criticized this project by questioning whether this project is set up to credit Kim Myung-soo, who is the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Korea, by having the project completed in 2023 when it is the last year of Chief Justice Kim’s tenure. However, there has been continuous voice towards innovating South Korea’s court system as it is the only department that is not going through digitalization while other government agencies and the financial circle are going through the trend.
Smart Court 4.0 Project cannot be used as a tool for political strife. Although electronic case filings are being used more and more within South Korea’s market, national method of handling cases is very outdated. People have to personally visit courts in order to confirm documents and they also have to prepare many documents before visiting a court.
Mobile service only allows one to make inquiries.
Such inconveniences pile on burdens on judges and cause them to perform their duties poorly. In order for a trial to be faithful, judges need to focus entirely on a corresponding trial. Also, organization and search of materials need to be minimized.
“We are going to completely innovate our judicial affairs system and focus on improving courts’ transparency and credibility.” said a representative for Supreme Court of Korea.
Staff Reporter Gil, Jaeshik | osolgil@etnews.com