National Police Agency Opens INTERPOL Network for Whole-of-Government Joint Use

Strengthening Real-Time Information Sharing in the Response to Transnational Crime

The National Police Agency is pushing forward with a plan to allow relevant government ministries to jointly use the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) network, in order to strengthen whole-of-government responses such as international cooperation against transnational crime.

On May 11, the National Police Agency announced that, under the leadership of the International Criminal Affairs Bureau (National Central Bureau for INTERPOL), it would establish and implement a "Three-Year Plan for Building an International Cooperation System," centered on making the INTERPOL network (I-24/7) a shared national asset. This initiative aims to effectively counter increasingly sophisticated transnational crimes such as drug trafficking, scams, and human trafficking.

Recently, transnational criminal organizations have been forming complex criminal structures that cross multiple countries. As a result, the need for an integrated, information-based, whole-of-government approach to international cooperation has been continuously raised. For example, the demand for extraditing fugitives from abroad has surged more than twofold over the past two years, making real-time information sharing and joint response systems at the government-wide level a national priority. However, the INTERPOL network is still exclusively managed by the police, and improving information accessibility through a whole-of-government joint utilization system has emerged as an urgent task.

Since 2024, the International Criminal Affairs Bureau has been working with the INTERPOL General Secretariat and reviewing relevant laws and regulations to expand the access range of the INTERPOL network by developing security compliance measures and a phased integration design. This new three-year plan is the result of institutionalizing those achievements. In the first phase, by the end of this year, the National Police Agency will systematize international cooperation procedures internally and open up the INTERPOL database for internal use. All departments, including investigation, women and youth, and traffic, will be granted access to query information and use it in investigations.

In the second phase, by 2027, the INTERPOL database and international cooperation system will be opened based on demand surveys from agencies such as the Korea Coast Guard, Korea Customs Service, and Korea Immigration Service, with the goal of a whole-of-government joint response to transnational crime. Ultimately, from 2028 onward, in the third phase, the plan is to connect international law enforcement networks such as ASEANAPOL (Southeast Asia) and Europol (Europe) with the international cooperation system to complete a whole-of-government joint utilization and operational framework.

Once this initiative is completed, all relevant agencies involved in investigation and law enforcement will be able to use the INTERPOL international database in real time to search for wanted individuals and cross-check biometric information, among other functions.

This is expected to fundamentally prevent omissions or delays in cooperation requests from the early stages of investigations and greatly speed up efforts to block the overseas concealment of criminal proceeds. In particular, real-time information sharing among related agencies will strengthen the national capacity to respond to transnational crime and make it possible to devise tailored cooperation strategies for each type of crime.

Park Junseong, Director of the International Criminal Affairs Bureau at the National Police Agency, emphasized, "The International Criminal Affairs Bureau has designed the open access system in close consultation with the INTERPOL General Secretariat," and added, "The whole-of-government joint utilization of the INTERPOL database will be a significant milestone in establishing our country as a key hub for international police cooperation."

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