“I will sue you” (How to Efficiently Sue)

We are lucky if we have never heard anyone telling us “I will sue you!”, or if we were never in the position of wanting to sue someone else, as a victim.

It is easy to say, “I will sue you”, but then, how exactly?

This post is to share how the system goes in Korea from the scratch, esp. for those of you who need to go through the process by himself/herself without any professional assistance from a lawyer who would otherwise be enable you to skip considerable hassles of below.

POLICE STATION – IN PRACTICE

I understand that almost nobody is comfortable with the police, yet obviously this is the place where you need to start with, preferably with a document describing the crime with the contact information of both sides, ready.

The process is two folds.

First, there is a designated place within the police station with the jurisdiction, for the receipt of a criminal complaint(Minwon). There, a police officer shall review your complaint and tell you to go to a certain department for the submission of the complaint, unless your complaint totally does not make sense or the period for the complaint has expired. (Please note that a few crimes have limited period of six months to sue((Article 230 of Criminal Procedure Act)).

Second, passing through the security, you shall meet the police officers in person who will actually be in charge of the matter. Yet, here, you will face the real hurdle before succeeding to sue.

NO EVIDENCE?

In theory, when there are elements of a crime such as ‘actus reus(guilty act)’ and ‘mens rea(guilty mind)’, there lies a crime. Yet, in reality, the police officer would just say “we don’t want to go to a battle without a weapon” and deny your submission of the criminal complaint, unless you have some evidence at hand.

Unlike the dedicated police officer in your favorite TV show collecting all the evidence by himself/herself, it is you who are expected to present the evidence to the police.

So, want to successfully sue? Start recording, take pictures, the moment you feel something is going wrong. You will certainly need those, other than your own stories, even to be able to sue.