Misconduct by South Korean police officers has continued unabated following the abolition of the Prosecution Service, which had served as one pillar of the criminal justice system for 78 years. Officers sent to full trial on criminal charges have repeatedly received no discipline or only light penalties, and at many provincial police agencies the share of internal audits leading to disciplinary action has fallen from last year. Observers say internal controls and external checks must be strengthened in step with the expanded investigative powers given to police.
Prosecutors notified police of indictments against officers in 1,460 cases from 2021 through August this year, according to National Police Agency data obtained by The Seoul Economic Daily through the office of Rep. Kim Min-jeon of the People Power Party on the 19th. The figure combines requests for full trial and requests for summary judgment such as fines, and excludes suspended indictments. Of the total, 619 cases, or 42.4%, were requests for full trial. Many involved job-related offenses, including 75 cases of leaking official secrets, 69 cases of bribery and 25 cases of abuse of authority.
In some cases, officers referred to full trial received no discipline or only light penalties. At the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, an officer who was referred to full trial in 2021 on charges of assault under color of authority received no disciplinary action. In 2022, an officer indicted on bribery charges was issued a warning without formal discipline, and the following year an officer sent to trial on charges related to tampering with evidence received a one-month pay cut. The data did not include trial outcomes in individual cases or the specific grounds for discipline.
The share of people handled through internal audits who faced 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 roughly 14 percentage points. Busan fell by more than half, to 7.02% from 15.48%. This year's figures cover the period through July.
Police are pursuing internal controls to prevent collusion with local interests, including a rule barring officers from serving in their hometown areas and a rotational assignment system. The hometown-avoidance rule has been applied to senior officers, but measures such as expanding rotational assignments to block ties between rank-and-file officers and local communities remain at the planning stage. With the criminal justice system being reorganized after the Prosecution Service was abolished, how outside bodies will uncover and check police misconduct that internal audits fail to detect has emerged as a further challenge. There is concern that internal audits alone cannot adequately control misconduct as police investigative powers expand.
"Misconduct in which police collude with local power brokers or business operators to bury cases or leak investigative information has continued without end," Kim said. "We need effective measures to determine who will now uncover the police misconduct that prosecutors used to expose, and to stop police from covering for their own."