Foreign Crimes Spreading in Fraud, Drugs, and Construction Sites... Police Conduct Intensive Crackdown for 3 Months

The National Police Agency announced on the 31st that it will conduct an intensive crackdown for three months until June 30, focusing on major foreign-related crimes such as drug distribution and gambling site operations to respond to transnational crimes.

According to the National Police Agency, the number of foreign suspects involved in the four major crimes (murder, robbery, theft, and violence), which had been decreasing due to COVID-19, has been increasing again since 2022, and drug-related crimes have also shown a steady upward trend over the past five years.

Additionally, the number of foreign nationals involved in gambling and adult entertainment offenses increased from 383 in 2022 to 625 in 2023, highlighting the growing need to eradicate fraudulent gambling crimes such as overseas-based investment scams, leading rooms, and gambling sites.

In particular, recently, foreign workers have been continuously entering due to the labor cost burden at construction sites, raising concerns about various related illegal activities (such as group violence) and the potential occurrence of crime victims.

Accordingly, the National Police Agency has selected three types of crimes as the focus for the first half of the year: △ public priority promises (fraud and gambling) △ drug-related crimes △ crimes related to foreign workers at construction sites.

Especially, in the event of foreign group crimes, joint investigation teams composed of metropolitan/provincial police agencies and police stations will be formed to actively respond from the early stages of the incident.

With the police organizational restructuring, the international crime investigation team of the metropolitan/provincial police agencies will concurrently handle Interpol operations and tracking tasks, thoroughly conducting investigations to identify overseas criminal organizations through international cooperation with Interpol.

The police plan to actively utilize the ‘Notification Obligation Exemption System’ to encourage illegal foreign residents who are crime victims to report incidents without fear of deportation.

A National Police Agency 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-related crimes. Additionally, we provide rewards for reporting international crimes and strictly guarantee the confidentiality of informants’ identities, so we ask for active cooperation.”

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