Research of criminal laws of major countries, such as Criminal Act, Criminal Procedure Act, and Criminal Administration Act, has been either merely concentrated on translating provisions and regulations, or highlighted only socially controversial issues to provide legislation guideline from a rather narrow perspective. However, enacting and amending law, and establishing and reforming field practices and system require the introduction and comparative analysis of issue-specific laws, theories, and court cases of foreign countries in a comprehensive and structured manner so that the research result could properly be integrated into our criminal system. Considering such need, the purposes of this study are as follows.

First, it aims to discover general theory of criminal law from a dogmatic perspective. In other words, we explore whether it is possible at all to find and set a “global standard,” and elicit relevant implications and conclusion for each issue. Next, the study also intends to compare and analyze effective laws and regulations as well as court cases and related systems as tools for reforming corresponding or similar systems and legal practices in the ROK. In addition, it plans to propose an international standard and procedure useful in a cross-border criminal justice collaboration, and provide norms and basic direction that can be used as reference in a search for criminals and investigation of crimes. Lastly, based on the primary outcome of this study, we further hope to establish a structured and multi-perspective foreign criminal law information system in the future.

This study looks at five countries – UK, US, France, Germany, and Japan – for analytical comparison of General and Individual Provisions of Criminal Act, Criminal Procedure Act, and regulation regarding international criminal justice collaboration. Under an objective of building a system for comparative criminal law research, issue-specific approach will be taken in translating relevant laws and regulations, comparing and analyzing the main contents, and introducing related institution and court cases. At the core of all these efforts lies harmonizing framework and structure that enables comparison among different countries. That is, the contents will be written based on a common structure and terms agreed upon through discussions of researchers. The outcome of our research will be once again organized in a form of database for more systematic presentation.

In particular, this year, the Comparative Criminal Law Database (CCLDB, /ccldb) was established to systematically search the results of research conducted from 2019 and make it available to anyone through the KICJ website. In addition, the investigation, prosecution, and trial parts of the criminal procedure acts of the five countries were newly introduced, analyzed and compared. To this end, first of all, the different parts of a specific country were described as different parts, taking a large framework while unifying the procedures of different criminal proceedings among countries to some extent. Next, while arranging the main terms of each country, we tried to translate them into Korean consistently. Each term and concept can be modified and supplemented at any time through further discussion and research. Finally, the criminal procedures of the five countries, from investigation to prosecution to trial, are schematically outlined through pictures to explain the entire procedure at a glance.