Prime minister says the government is considering reviving the conscripted police system

Prime Minister Han Duck-soo announces a statement on the prevention of crimes with abnormal motives at the government office in Jongno-gu, Seoul on August 23. Jo Tae-hyeong

The government decided to revive the conscripted police system to better respond to crimes with abnormal motives, which have occurred nationwide recently. In other words, the government will overturn a decision by the previous government, which abolished the system as a way to resolve the decline in military human resources. This is expected to trigger a heated social debate on the lack of manpower in the military.

Prime Minister Han Duck-soo announced a statement on the prevention of crimes with abnormal motives at the government office in Jongno-gu, Seoul on August 23. He said, “We will restructure the police organization with police tasks putting top priority on public safety,” and explained that the government would actively consider reintroducing the conscripted police system.

The conscripted police are an auxiliary police branch under the National Police Agency and is a quasi-military organization of conscripts who choose to serve in the police instead of the military during their mandatory military service period. It is an alternative form of military service. The military would entrust the Police Agency or the Coast Guard with its recruits, who will have police status during their service but be discharged as a reserve sergeant. The Moon Jae-in government abolished the system to respond to the drop in military manpower due to the demographic cliff. The conscripted police organization was reduced gradually from 2018 and disappeared into history after the last class was discharged in April.

The problem of declining human resources in the military has become more serious, and in this situation, reviving the auxiliary police system just four months after it was abolished is expected to trigger a heated debate. According to the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses (KIDA), the number of military troops, which had dropped below 600,000 in 2018, had dropped to 480,000 in 2022. If more soldiers opt to serve in the auxiliary police organization, it could cause problems in maintaining and managing the military troops in the mid- to long-term. This has drawn criticism that if the police needed more manpower, they should recruit more officers instead, and that it is not appropriate to take and use military personnel, which they can easily access.

Police Commissioner General Yoon Hee-keun explained that the latest measure was to efficiently reassign human resources according to priorities. He said, “Four to five years ago, we had up to 25,000 men in the conscripted police. Even if we can’t have that many, we judged there was a need to have people on duty 24/7 to swiftly respond to the recent stream of crimes, terrorism, and social disasters.” He stressed, “We are not increasing the number of recruits. We will discuss priorities within the existing number of human resources with the defense ministry.”

The commissioner general also said, “We plan to gradually hire a total of 7,500-8,000 people--over 3,500 people with experience for the rapid response team and 4,000 people to be assigned to major locations in large cities,” and said that the entire recruitment process could take about 7-9 months.

Yoon explained that at present, the number of police personnel available for patrolling the streets was around 30,000 of the total 140,000 police manpower and shared plans to bring in all police personnel, mobile police units and even the special operation units to dispatch officers in major locations for the time being. He also explained that the police would dispatch additional support personnel for public order, such as voluntary crime prevention groups, and said, “We are designing measures to have more people engage in visible activities in the streets.”

The police are also promoting ways to restructure the police organization to manage the personnel in police patrol units and police substations more efficiently. Yoon said, “Since it is based on a four-shift work schedule, there are not as many officers on duty in any given day as people think,” and explained that the police were reviewing measures to change the work system or to minimize management and increase the number of personnel on the field.

Prime Minister Han said, “As for heinous crimes, we will introduce life imprisonment without parole and promptly establish regulations on punishment for carrying weapons in a public place and for threatening the public.” The government will also consider introducing a judicial hospitalization policy so that patients with severe psychiatric disorders can receive timely treatment. Judicial hospitalization is a policy that allows the court to hospitalize a patient with a psychiatric disorder when they pose the risk of committing a crime.

The government will also improve mental health policies to establish a systematic program spanning the entire process, from the prevention of mental disorders to a return to ordinary life, and to expand support for the medical and nursing fees of crime victims.

The prime minister said the government would actively work with experts and civic groups to resolve the structural factors that caused crimes. He meantioned the need to connect isolated people and restore a spirit of cooperation, which enabled people to look out for each other. He asked the people for their active cooperation “to build social capital based on trust and acceptance.”