law cases) of the Court. The last serial number is given in the order of case filing of each year. Statistics Approximately, the Supreme Court receives about 35,000 ~ 48,000 appeal cases per year from year 2011 to 2020. Yet South Korean Supreme Court has no legal power to select reviewable case by discretion, so it cannot make 'permission to appeal' (). Rather, every cases appealed to the Supreme Court should be decided at least in level of Petty Bench composed of four Supreme Court Justices. This unique institutional structure increases workload of the Supreme Court seriously. For example, while the Supreme Court makes decision on about 35,000 ~ 50,000 cases per year, only 10 ~ 20 cases are decided at the Grand Bench per year. Even former Supreme Court Justice Park Sihwan confessed in his own article after retirement, that much of cases in the Petty Bench are deliberated for only '3 to 4 minutes', which makes role of Research Judges in the Court significantly important. Whether how to reform this system is still remained in South Korea as controversy among increasing number of Justices, empowering the Court with discretion of 'permission to appeal', or establishing another 'appellate court' () which only deals with second-rate important final appeal cases abandoned from the Supreme Court. This was one of the reason that former Chief Justice Yang Sung-tae tried to interfere in lower court judgments to get endorsement on foundation of 'appellate court' from former President of South Korea, Park Geun-hye, as Yang opposed to increasing number of Supreme Court Justices as since it can harm previlieges of Justices. Criticism and Issues The Supreme Court's fame and trust is again gradually deteriorating again in contemporary South Korea, due to social concerns on unfairly lenient attitude toward establishments like Chaebol and embarrassing political struggle inside the hierarchy of ordinary courts such as case-rigging scandal of 15th Chief Justice Yang Sung-tae. Both Constitution and the Court Organization Act have no contingency plan for massive vacancy of the Supreme Court. Thus, when the National Assembly refuses to make consent on appointment of Supreme Court Justices by article 104(1) and (2) of the Constitution, there is no other option and the Supreme Court is paralyzed by vacancy of Justices. While this problem is also happening in the Constitutional Court of Korea, the problem of the Supreme Court is lighter than that of Constitutional Court, because