Police Agency Presents South Korea's COVID-19 Police Response Case at International Organization Meeting

Photo by National Police Agency

[Asia Economy Reporter Lee Gwan-ju] The Korean police announced their response strategies to the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19) at an international organization meeting and shared their know-how with countries around the world.

On the 27th (Korean time), the National Police Agency held a webinar titled "Innovative COVID-19 Response: Korea's Concrete Cases" together with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Seoul Policy Centre (USPC). The webinar, conducted via video conference, was attended by more than 120 participants from 37 countries including the UNDP headquarters law enforcement officer in New York, USA, Germany, Canada, and Singapore.

UNDP is one of the representative international organizations coordinating the United Nations (UN) development activities. Stephan Klingebiel, head of USPC, explained the background of holding this seminar, saying, "We have received requests from various countries to jointly explore ways to overcome the COVID-19 crisis," and "We felt an absolute necessity to share Korea's successful cases."

The seminar proceeded with a presentation on the Korean police's COVID-19 response strategies followed by a Q&A session with participants from various countries. Kim Yong-jong, head of the Crisis Management Center at the National Police Agency, who gave the presentation, explained, "The Korean police have established a disaster countermeasure headquarters to maintain a 24-hour response system and are concentrating human and material resources on quarantine-related police activities."

In particular, based on the English materials titled "Korean Police's COVID-19 Response," recently distributed worldwide through Interpol and overseas diplomatic missions, the Korean police specifically introduced processes of police work and quarantine activities in infectious disease disaster situations according to circumstances, including ▲support for epidemiological investigations ▲prevention and countermeasures for self-quarantine violations ▲tracking of suspected COVID-19 patients ▲support for foreigners ▲joint inspections of multi-use facilities ▲protection of police officers and isolation measures for police facilities.

During the subsequent Q&A session, participants from various countries showed interest by asking about changes in the security environment such as crime status after the spread of COVID-19, police response strategies, and methods for locating self-quarantine violators. Sopheen Baka, UNDP Special Policy Officer for Law Enforcement, commented, "The UN-level guidelines for effective response and the Korean police's quarantine and security activities align impressively in many aspects." A National Police Agency official stated, "We will continue to do our best to share excellent experience cases with the international community so that we can overcome global crises together."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.