3 out of 10 Criminal Suspects Are Foreigners... Police Conduct Intensive Crackdown

Among 10 suspects arrested by the police for committing crimes, 3 were found to be foreigners. Accordingly, the police have established a plan to conduct intensive crackdowns targeting foreigners to eradicate international crimes.

The National Investigation Headquarters of the National Police Agency will select major international crime targets and conduct intensive crackdowns for 77 days starting from the 16th, as crimes committed by foreigners residing in the country have increased.

According to the police, the proportion of foreign suspects in the four major crimes (murder, robbery, theft, violence), which had been decreasing due to COVID-19, reversed to an increasing trend from last year, and drug-related crimes have steadily increased for five consecutive years. In fact, the proportion of foreign suspects was recorded as 27.9% in 2021, 28.2% last year, and 30.3% in the first half of this year. The number of foreign drug offenders also increased by 28% to 1,025 in the first half of this year compared to the same period last year.

Recently, foreign crimes have become organized by country and region, shifting towards interest-centered activities such as distributing drugs or operating illegal gambling sites to generate huge profits. A representative case is the mass arrest of Thai nationals in Incheon last June who smuggled drugs disguised as health functional foods and sold and used them domestically.

Through the intensive crackdown on international crimes conducted over three months from April, the police arrested 772 major international crime suspects, of whom 143 were detained. Approximately 14.8 billion KRW (based on preservation amount) of criminal proceeds were also confiscated and preserved before prosecution.

The police plan to continue intensive crackdowns on major foreign crimes in the second half of the year, focusing on three types of crimes: △ violent crimes △ economic crimes △ drug-related crimes. In case of foreign group crimes occurring during the crackdown period, joint investigation teams will be formed with metropolitan and provincial police agencies and police stations to actively respond from the early stages of the incident. Additionally, by confiscating and preserving criminal proceeds before prosecution, they aim to block the flow of crime profits into organizational funds, and through international cooperation such as Interpol, they will thoroughly block the domestic inflow of overseas criminal organizations by identifying their backing forces.

Meanwhile, the police plan to actively utilize the ‘Notification Obligation Exemption System’ to encourage crime victims to report incidents without fear of deportation, even if they are undocumented foreigners. A police official stated, "We will continue to proactively respond to international crimes by strengthening continuous crackdowns and intelligence gathering based on cooperation with related agencies regarding foreign crimes. We also provide rewards for reporting international crimes and strictly guarantee the identity of informants, so we ask for active cooperation."

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