Most of my foreign clients on the victim side arrive with the same account: they went to the police, told the story, were treated politely, and then heard nothing for months. Usually what is missing is the document that makes the machine start — a criminal complaint (고소장, gosojang) — and an understanding of what the Korean system does with it once it exists.
→Complaint (고소), Report (신고), and Accusation (고발)
Korean criminal procedure distinguishes three things that English collapses into one word, and the difference decides what rights you have afterwards.
| Term | What It Means |
|---|---|
| Report (신고, singo) | Telling the police that something happened — including the emergency call. It informs; it does not by itself make you a party with procedural rights |
| Complaint (고소, goso) | The victim, or someone entitled to act for them, formally asks for the offender to be punished. This makes you a complainant (고소인, gosoin) with rights to notification and to challenge the outcome |
| Accusation (고발, gobal) | A third party who is not the victim asks for prosecution — used where the wrong is against the public rather than against one person |
The practical consequence is blunt. If you only reported, you may never be told what happened to the case. If you filed a complaint, non-prosecution has to be notified to you and can be attacked.
→What Goes Into the Document
A complaint is a written document filed at a police station (경찰서, gyeongchalseo) or with the prosecutors' office (검찰청, geomchalcheong). There is no magic form, and a badly drafted one is worse than none — it fixes a version of the facts you will be held to at every later stage.
- The parties — your details as complainant, and whatever identifies the accused (피고소인, pigosoin): name, phone number, account number, messenger handle, workplace. A complaint against an unidentified person is possible, but the investigation starts far behind
- The facts, in date order — what happened, when, where, and what was said, written plainly and without argument. Emotional narration is the most common defect in complaints drafted without help
- The offence you say it constitutes — fraud (사기, sagi), assault (폭행, pokhaeng), threat (협박, hyeopbak), embezzlement (횡령, hoengnyeong), defamation (명예훼손, myeongyehweson). Getting this wrong is survivable; the investigator can re-characterise it, but a coherent legal theory changes how seriously the file is treated
- The evidence, listed and attached — transfer records, contracts, KakaoTalk screenshots with visible dates and identities, recordings, medical certificates (진단서, jindanseo), photographs, witness details
- A statement of what you want — that the accused be investigated and punished
Investigators do not reconstruct your case for you. They test the case you hand them, against the account the other side gives.
Documents in a foreign language should be filed with a Korean translation. The complaint itself is filed in Korean, and an interpreter can be arranged for the questioning that follows — but a complaint written in English and left untranslated slows a file down at exactly the stage where momentum matters.
→What Happens After Filing
The file is assigned to an investigator, who will call you in to be questioned as the complainant. That session is not a formality — your statement becomes the backbone of the file, and inconsistencies between it and your written complaint are the first thing a defence will use.
- Complainant questioning — bring the originals of everything you attached, and take an interpreter if there is any doubt about nuance
- Investigation of the accused — they are questioned, and their account is put against yours
- The police decision — either the case is sent to the prosecutors (송치, songchi), or the police decide not to send it (불송치, bulsongchi), which must be notified to you with reasons
- The prosecutor's decision — prosecution, a summary order for a fine, suspension of indictment (기소유예, gisoyuye), or non-prosecution (불기소, bulgiso)
Timelines vary enormously. A documented fraud with bank records can move in weeks; a disputed assault with no witnesses can sit for months. Silence is normal and is not a signal about the merits.
→When the Answer Is No
A negative decision is not the end of the road, and this is where being a complainant rather than a mere reporter pays off.
- Against a police non-referral (불송치) — you may file an objection (이의신청, uisinsincheong) with the police, which sends the case to the prosecutors for review
- Against a prosecutor's non-prosecution (불기소) — you may seek reconsideration by the higher prosecutors' office (항고, hanggo), and, if that fails, ask a court to order prosecution through the adjudication application procedure (재정신청, jaejeongsincheong)
- Ask for the reasons first — the written explanation of why the case failed tells you whether the problem was the evidence, the legal characterisation, or a finding that the dispute is civil rather than criminal
- Watch the deadlines — each of these routes is time-limited, and the periods are short enough that "I'll deal with it next month" ends the matter
→Two Traps That Catch Foreign Complainants
Some offences die on a deadline of their own. For offences that require a complaint to be prosecuted, the complaint generally has to be filed within six months of learning who the offender is. Miss that window and the strongest evidence in the world does not help.
A false or reckless complaint is itself a crime. False accusation (무고, mugo) is prosecuted seriously in Korea, and a complaint filed to gain leverage in what is really a contractual dispute can end with the complainant under investigation. The line is not "I turned out to be wrong" — it is knowingly asserting facts you know to be untrue. But it is a real line, and pressure from a business dispute is not a defence.
Related to that second point: many things that feel criminal are civil. Money lent and not returned is usually a debt, not fraud, unless there was deception at the moment of borrowing. Filing criminally to force a repayment is a strategy that fails often and occasionally rebounds. Where both routes exist, they are usually run deliberately — not interchangeably.