Korean Job Discussion Forums

[itaewonguy]

urder, rape, robbery and other violent crimes are climbing higher.

The National Police Agency (NPA) said Thursday that the number of crimes committed in 2009 across the country totaled 2.02 million, down 2.1 percent from 2.06 million a year earlier. However, five types of violent crime � murder, robbery, rape, theft and violence � jumped 8.4 percent to 590,087 last year from 544,527 in 2008.

The number of murders soared 24 percent to 1,374 nationwide over the one-year period, while robberies surged 32 percent to 6,351.

The number of burglaries reached 256,423, up 15 percent from 2008, with rape and other sex crimes rising 6.4 percent to 18,351.

The rapid jump in cases of violent crimes came even after the NPA introduced a performance-based payment system for police officers to encourage them to work harder to prevent crimes and apprehend more criminals.

�We are making every effort to prevent sexual assaults against women and children, but heinous crimes appear to be rising� a police officer said.

Murders occurred most frequently from July through September when the weather was hot and humid. Robberies took place most often in May.

With the Korean economy tanking, the number of fraud, embezzlement and other white collar crimes grew 10 percent to 290,873 from 2008.

Among white collar crimes, fraud totaled 221,897, followed by embezzlement at 26,626, credit-and auction-related offenses at 16,124 and breach of trust at 6,216.

The NPA�s white paper also reported that police apprehended 2.33 million criminals across the nation in 2009. Of the 2.33 million, 448,420 committed crimes �by accident,� accounting for 19.2 percent of the total.

About 1.11 million were repeat offenders, with 380,130 criminals arrested for committing the same crime. In particular, violent crimes showed high rates of recidivism. Around 62.5 percent of murders were committed by repeat offenders.

The recidivism rates for robbery, arson, violence, theft and rape stood at 64.7 percent, 65.7 percent, 54 percent, 50 percent and 47.9 percent, respectively, indicating a more effective rehabilitation program should be introduced for violent criminals while they are in jail to stop them from repeating offenses.

To cope with the growing cases of violent crimes, police said they had implemented a range of measures last year to boost public safety by expanding the number of police stations and have more police officers patrol crime-prone areas.

[Radius]

does this mean i have to walk around with a shank in my back pocket when im out with my girlfriend in public?

[AsiaESLbound]

The Korean economy is tanking? Oh please, not that same ol' conundrum we are all so blue in the face about.

Murder? Seems high at 1 out of 34,974 people, but that is about the average for Asia according to Wikipedia's list of countries by homicide rate at 3.2 per 100,000 people. Don't ask how high South Africa ranks on this list.

I can see how theft and burglary are increasingly problematic. You have millions of young guys hungry for money and electronics, but paid like only 800,000 won a month to work or serve the army. White collar fraud and corruption has probably been a problem for about 5,000 years or since the dawn of civilization.

[LDJS]

I urdered a pizza yesterday.

[murmanjake]

hey play nice

you could urd someone's feelings...

[LDJS]

Just joking; I don't want to be out of urder or anything.

[murmanjake]

It's ok

I don't think anyone urd you anyways

[TheUrbanMyth]

[Koreadays]

that is a lot of murders. I wonder what kind of Murders these are.
gang related? domestic related? serial killings etc...
anyway to find out this information?

[Epik_Teacher]

And if you ask any Korean, the rise in crime was caused by all those evil foreigners!

[PatrickGHBusan]

How many Koreans did you ask EPIK?

[LDJS]

[Junior]

Koreans should have mandatory criminal background checks to live here.

[Epik_Teacher]

[Bibbitybop]

I've suggested for years that the ongoing apathy of the police will trigger more crimes, not only from criminals, but also from people taking justice into their own hands.

Just remember the crime rates of foreigners, everyone:

From 2007 statistics:

The crime rate of Korean citizen (the number of crime occurrence by citizens compared to that of total population) was about 3.5% while the crime rate of foreigner was 1.4%. The crime rate for foreign teachers as a subgroup is even lower.