Misconduct by South Korean police officers has continued unabated following the abolition of the Prosecution Service, which had served as one pillar of the country's criminal justice system for 78 years. Officers sent to full trial on criminal charges have repeatedly received no penalty or only light disciplinary action, and the share of internal investigations resulting in disciplinary referrals has fallen from a year earlier at many regional police agencies. Critics say internal controls and outside checks must be strengthened as the police expand their investigative powers.
According to Korean National Police Agency data obtained by The Seoul Economic Daily through the office of Kim Min-jeon, a lawmaker of the People Power Party, prosecutors notified the police of a total of 1,460 indictments of officers between 2021 and August this year. The figure combines cases sent to full trial and those seeking summary judgment, such as fines, and excludes suspended indictments. Annual totals stayed above 245 for five consecutive years — 272 in 2021, 267 in 2022, 263 in 2023, 273 in 2024 and 245 last year — with another 140 reported through August this year.
More than four in 10 reported cases went beyond a request for fines to a full trial. Of the 619 cases sent to full trial, 259, or 41.8%, resulted in dismissal or removal from office. Across all indicted cases, dismissals and removals totaled 321. Many of the charges were tied directly to police duties, including 75 cases of leaking official secrets, 69 of bribery and 25 of abuse of authority.
Some officers sent to full trial faced no penalty or only light discipline. At the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, an officer sent to full trial in 2021 on charges of assault under color of office received no disciplinary action. In 2022, an officer indicted on bribery charges was given an informal warning, and the following year an officer sent to trial on charges related to destroying evidence received a one-month pay cut. The data did not include the outcomes of individual trials or the specific grounds for the disciplinary decisions.
Misconduct tied to how the police handle investigations and cases also surfaced in several regions. In South Chungcheong Province, two serving police superintendents were sent to trial in 2022 on charges including accepting about 20 million won ($13,600) in bribes from a company and closing cases without booking some offenses. Their misconduct was uncovered by prosecutors while reviewing cases referred to them by the police. Similar misconduct had been detected in the past in Jeju, where the false closure of the Jang Mi-ran disappearance case came to light this year. Officers there were punished after it emerged that, around 2021, they had arbitrarily returned 17 complaints and criminal complaints and recorded 14 traffic accidents involving injuries as property-damage-only crashes.
The share of internal investigations that led to requests for disciplinary action also declined in many regions. In North Chungcheong Province, the rate fell 22.85 percentage points to 9.09% from 31.94%, while Daegu and North Gyeongsang Province each dropped by about 14 percentage points. Busan more than halved to 7.02% from 15.48%. This year's figures cover the period through July.
The police are pursuing internal measures to prevent collusion with local interests, including a rule barring officers from serving in their hometowns and a system of rotating assignments. The hometown rule has been applied to senior officials, but steps such as expanding rotating assignments to block ties between rank-and-file officers and local figures remain at the planning stage. With the criminal justice system being restructured after the abolition of the Prosecution Service, how outside bodies will uncover and check police misconduct that internal audits fail to catch has emerged as another challenge. There is concern that internal oversight alone cannot adequately curb wrongdoing as the police gain broader investigative powers.
Kim said misconduct in which officers collude with local power brokers or business owners to bury cases or leak investigative information has continued without pause. "We need effective measures on who will now uncover the police misconduct that prosecutors used to expose, and on how to stop the police from shielding their own," she said.