“It is a veterans’ reward, but it is not applicable to a job with ‘high risk'”
The family of a prosecutor who died from frequent overtime and overwork sued for recognition of the deceased as a national meritorious person, but lost.
According to the legal community on the 13th, the 8th administrative division of the Seoul Administrative Court (Chief Judge Lee Jeong-hee) ruled once morest the plaintiff in April of losing the lawsuit filed by the bereaved family of the deceased former prosecutor A once morest the head of the Seoul Southern Veterans Affairs Office to cancel the decision not to comply with the national merit requirement.
Person A, who worked in a rural area, lost consciousness while returning home from overtime in September 2018 and died of an acute myocardial infarction.
From February to July of that year, Mr. A worked as a public prosecutor in charge of trials and handled 718 cases.
It was found that on average regarding 90,000 pages of evidence had to be reviewed per month, and 30 to 80 witnesses were examined each month.
From July to September, he worked as an investigative prosecutor and received 453 dividends and handled 349 cases.
As an exclusive prosecutor for juveniles, he also took charge of other tasks, such as understanding the operation status of related groups, and worked over 36 hours in July and 38 hours in August.
A’s family applied for national merit and veterans compensation in February 2019.
According to related laws, when a public official dies while performing his/her duties, if the job is directly related to the protection of people’s lives and property, he/she is classified as a person of national merit;
According to this, the Veterans Affairs Office decided that Mr. A was a veterans reward, but not a national meritorious person.
The bereaved family was dissatisfied with the decision of the Veterans Affairs Office and filed an administrative lawsuit in July 2020.
The court that heard the case said, “It cannot be denied that the work performed by the deceased is related to the protection and security of the state or the protection of people’s lives and property,” but said, “It is insufficient to recognize that the duties are directly related.” dismissed the claim.
The court held that the ‘directly related job’ defined by the National Merit Act should be a job that poses a high risk to life or body, such as disaster management, fire fighting, and treatment of infectious disease patients, but the prosecutor’s job did not fall under this category.
/yunhap news
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