According to National Police Agency data obtained on Monday by Seoul Economic Daily through the office of Rep. Kang Myung-koo of the People Power Party, the average investigative experience of officers at 19 organizations — the National Police Agency headquarters and 18 metropolitan and provincial police agencies — stood at 9.4 years this year. That is down 0.4 year, or 4.1%, from 9.8 years last year. Average investigative experience had risen every year from 2022 through last year before declining for the first time this year. The average at the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency was 7.9 years, the shortest in the country, down for four consecutive years from 8.6 years in 2022.
The problem is that while officers' experience is shrinking, the caseload police must handle is expected to grow. With the abolition of the Prosecution Service and the implementation of the revised Criminal Procedure Act on the 2nd of this month, the scope of police investigations widened, leaving officers to absorb cases previously handled by prosecutors on top of their existing workload.
As of August, police held 403,239 cases, about 92% of the 438,650 tallied for all of last year. Add the transfer of wanted-suspect and unresolved cases previously managed by prosecutors, plus the burden of supplementary investigations, and the workload for frontline investigators is set to grow further. With cases increasing even as average investigative experience falls, concerns are mounting that investigations could be delayed or poorly handled.
Avoidance of investigative units is also deepening. The number of officers who voluntarily surrendered their investigative designation this year reached 633, up from 565 last year. The designation system manages specialized investigative personnel — in criminal, white-collar and forensic investigations — separately from general police officers. Surrendering it allows an officer to leave an investigative unit for another post. The increase means more officers are shunning investigative work.
"Prosecution reform is expanding police investigative powers and responsibilities, but on the ground, skilled investigators are leaving," Kang said. "Simply increasing the number of investigators through stopgap staffing cannot guarantee the quality of investigations."
He added: "The government must ease the excessive workload on investigators and craft substantive measures to improve conditions, including stronger compensation, so that skilled investigators stay in the field. Since the public ultimately bears the cost of shoddy investigations, the government must take responsibility and come up with fundamental measures."