The hearsay rule was introduced into the Criminal Procedure Law by the Act No. 705, Sep. 1, 1961 in Korea. Any document which contains statements in place of the statements made at the preparatory hearing or at the public trial shall not be admitted as evidence of guilt except as provided by a few articles of the Criminal Procedure Law(§310-2). The investigation report which contains statements of witnesses prepared by the public prosecutors or by the judicial police officers may be introduced into evidence if the genuineness thereof is established by the person who made original statements at the preparatory hearing or at the public trial(§312 (1), §313 (1)). If the witnesses are unable to be present or to testify at the preparatory hearing or at the public trial because of death, sickness, residing abroad or other reasons, the recorded statements of witnesses are not excluded by the hearsay rule(§314). And the probative value of evidence shall be left to the discretion of the judges(§308). Recently the innovative reformation of trial has been the hottest issue and the Criminal Procedure Law is amended by the Act No. Apr. 30, 2007. During that turmoil the Supreme Court ruled that even though the admissibility of recorded statements of witnesses is accepted on the basis of agreement between adversarial parties(§318), the credibility of those statements is extremely restricted in the case the confrontation right of the defendant is limited. The witness-investigation report may have probative values when the recorded statements are so accurate that they are self-evident or if other evidences collaborate the reliability of the recorded statements.

The Korean Constitution and the Korean Criminal Procedure Code provide the emergency arrest exception for the warrant requirements. The investigative authorities can arrest suspects without an arrest warrant issued by a judge if there is "probable cause" to believe that a suspect has committed a felony and if there is concern to believe that the suspect may destroy evidence or attempt to escape. In the case of an emergency arrest, the Criminal Procedure Code does not require that an arrest warrant be filed within 48 hours but it only requires that a detention be filed, therefore, the warrantless arrest without any judicial control is legitimatized for at least 48 hours. As a result, the investigative authorities tend not to pursue the arrest on the warrant, but depend on the emergency arrest because it is free of any warrant requirement and gives them much time to interrogate the suspect without any judicial control. In addition, the investigative authorities have developed two kinds of convenient systems to avoid the warrant requirement. The first is "voluntary accompaniment," which is the Korean version of the U.S. Terry stop system. The second is "investigation of relevant persons" who voluntarily appear before the authorities following the authorities' request to come to the police station although they are not a suspect. Since these two systems are not officially a compulsory measure, the constitutional restrictions for an arrest warrant do not attach. In particular, the authorities often proceed these two systems first, try to acquire informations from citizens, then arrest citizens if they are not cooperative. This Article is to review two Korean Supreme Court decisions to deter these two investigative authorities' tactics. The Decisions of July, 6, 2006 provides strict requirements of permissible "emergency arrest" of the "relevant persons" who voluntarily appear before the authorities. The Decisions of September, 8, 2006 stablished that if the individuals who are asked to voluntarily accompany the officer to the police station are not given the "freedom to leave" at any time, as a practical matter, the "voluntary accompaniment" is an illegal arrest.