I have been charged with public official dereliction of duty. How should I respond?

Hello. This is the administrative law specialist attorney at Daeryun Law Firm.

Just because you have been charged with public official dereliction of duty (Criminal Act Article 122) does not mean that punishment is immediately confirmed.

The crime of public official dereliction of duty is established when a public official intentionally abandons or neglects their duty without legitimate reasons, beyond the level of mere negligence in business.

The court recognizes punishment only when there is a specific obligation given under the law and the official intentionally fails to perform it, causing substantive harm to state functions.

That is, the key to response is to argue that even if there are circumstances of business delay, it is difficult to view it as criminally punishable public official dereliction of duty.

Therefore, to clear the charges, a strategic approach proving that it was not "intentional neglect" is most important.

First, you must materialize objective situations that could not be resolved by your will alone, such as work overload, lack of personnel, and complexity of civil complaint processing at the time, to construct "legitimate reasons."

During the investigation process, based on work distribution charts and guidelines, you must logically explain that the decisions you made were the best within the scope of administrative discretion.

In particular, departing from the investigative agency's framework of "you didn't perform your duties," you must emphasize that it was an unavoidable delay for priority adjustment or procedure review according to the situation at the time and actively deny intentionality.

Therefore, if you are facing investigation or audit, it is desirable to first organize the response direction suited to the matter and then engage in the procedure.

I recommend protecting your precious public service life by preparing flawless explanatory materials through the assistance of an administrative law specialist attorney.