by the Supreme Court of Korea

“ Summary of Decision Article 308 of the Criminal Procedure Act that provides for the principle of free assessment permits the judge to use his discretionary judgment to determine a piece of evidence's probative value, because it is an appropriate way to discover the real truth and it does not mean that the judge's arbitrary judgment shall be quoted, therefore the judge of a de facto trial who holds the absolute right to judging evidence shall consider all recognitions obtained and all evidence investigated in trial procedures in recognizing facts with no exception. ”

“ In particular, in the case of scientific evidence methods including gene tests or blood type tests, if all factual premises are proven to be true and the method of reasoning is scientifically justifiable so there is absolutely no or only negligible margin of error, they shall be deemed to be significantly binding for a judge to recognize facts, therefore even though recognizing facts is the right of a de facto trial, recklessly excluding it without any reasonable ground amounts to going beyond the limit of the principle of free assessment, which cannot be permitted. ”

“ Main Issues The permissible degree of discretionary judgment in finding the accused guilty in the criminal actions and the probative value of scientific proving methods The degree of credibility of witness' statement and the procedural requirements for the enhancement of credibility in the case where the witness was confronted with only one suspect or only one picture was shown to the witness for the identification in the procedure of a criminal identification through the appearance of suspects et al. ”