The Dong-A Ilbo reports crimes committed by foreigners living in Korea are growing more brutal and sophisticated, but the language barrier and complaints by human rights groups are preventing police from carrying out proper investigations.
Take, for instance, an incident last year when police brought in a Hong Konger, Nigerian and Singaporean into Namdaemun Police Station on charges of copying credit cards. The three foreigners went riot in the police station, throwing stuff around. Kim Jong-mi, the detective who was in charge of the investigation at the time, said the suspects knew Korean society is now valuing the human rights of foreigners, so they intentionally went berserk. He said foreigners sometimes make a scene and threaten to inform the Korea Human Rights Commission or civic groups if the police try to stop them.
The National Police Agency notes that crimes by foreigners in Korea have tripled since 2001, hitting 14,524 last year.
Foreigner crimes are also moving away from simple acts of violence to crimes of growing sophistication, like fraud and embezzlement.
Police complain, however, that because of the current social climate stressing the human rights of foreigners and budget and personnel limits, they are experiencing difficulty investigating foreign crime. One police officer said because of the “lenient social atmosphere towards illegal aliens,” some foreign criminals make their livings by claiming “human rights.” He also noted that more foreigners are being brought in for serious offenses and sophisticated crimes rather than simple assault and theft.
Police also complained about difficulties in IDing suspects. One police official said because foreigners staying under three months aren’t fingerprinted, there are times when they cannot identify suspects they’ve arrested. He complained that because of the human rights issue, police cannot call for foreigners to be fingerprinted.
Finally, there’s the issue of language. The Korean National Police (KNP) currently has 887 interpreters, but only 182 speak languages other than English or Japanese.
Moreover, only about 1,000 cops work in the agency’s foreign affairs desk.
A detective in Gangnam said the language barrier wasn’t so much a problem with simple assault cases, but with sophisticated crimes, it was different. He said with sophisticated crimes like voice phishing, even if they catch some of the small fish, it isn’t easy to net the big fishes because of difficulties in carrying out investigations in foreign languages.
This is another reason why police have yet to formulate clear measures to deal with the constant intelligence they’ve been receiving that foreigner criminal organizations have been forming in Itaewon, Gyeonggi-do Ansan and elsewhere.
An official with Yongsan Police Station said in the case of organized crime, it was important to manage ones sources, but Korean detectives were unable to handle foreign sources.
As a resident of Yongsan-gu, that makes me feel much safer.
Anyway, the Dong-A says the language and human rights issues were the most commonly cited issues by civic groups.
An official with one migrant workers association said the lack of professional interpreters leads to poor interpretations, which often works against foreigners being investigated. He also said most migrant laborers haven’t an understanding of even their basic human rights, so they do whatever the police tell them to do, disadvantaging them further.
A criminology professor at Gyemyung University said foreigner crimes would increase in the future, and police needed to boost the number of personnel specializing in investigating foreigners and cultivate personnel fluent in foreign languages and understanding of foreign cultures.
24 Comments
Yeah, those pesky human rights, always getting in the way of despotic control over other people.
Humm, well if the number of foreigners happens to be increasing then I suppose the number of foreigner related crimes would also increase ?
If they are wielding a tire iron, just shoot them.
If they are waving a credit card around, make them pay for your drinks and then put them in a taxi and let the taxi driver do that special “taxi driver thing” to them.
Why bother the police with these things when they have to worry about turning on their lights and have to concentrate on driving around like they are on there way to something they actually give a sh*t about ?
“He complained that because of the human rights issue, police cannot call for foreigners to be fingerprinted.”
I’m a foreigner. I was fingerprinted when I got in a motorcycle accident.
One police officer said because of the “lenient social atmosphere towards illegal aliens,” some foreign criminals make their livings by claiming “human rights.”
What is mean by this? Is ‘claiming ‘human rights” in this case a reference to seeking political amnesty?
I do agree that foreigner-caused and -related crimes will increase, both absolutely and relatively. First, more people means more incidences of crime. But also, Korea needs to consider the problems related to its use of an illegal-immigrant workforce for the performance of its manual-labor. In recent years, there has been growth in the number of economically-disadvantaged persons coming here, and lack of money has a positive relationship with the incidence of crime. Illegal immigrants by definition have already committed a crime, even if they abide by all other laws; even so, those who are willing to break one law may break others as well.
Anybody read James Church’s ‘Hidden Moon”, second of the inspector O mysteries set in North Korea? Remarkable congruence in the problems he faces dealing with Kazakh gangsters (and his own organization) and what the police in S. Korea are complaining about with foreigner crimes. But maybe James Church just did his homework in the South and then just extrapolated? I know this is trivial fiction, but as always life imitates art and vice versa. And I’m not totally unsympathetic to the police (arrgh, never thought I’d say that!).
#3 - My guess is that they do crazy things like ask for lawyers and ask to speak to their embassies rather than allowing police to pressure them into forced confessions… You know… human rights.
Perhaps the police should start taking some cues from the factories and start hiring some 3D workers to help them with interpretation. As opposed the the average English speaking foreigner, the average non-English speaker is much more likely to be able to speak Korean. Why not have the police enlist the help of some of the more honest, stable and Korean-fluent 3D workers and pay them a salary to assist in crimes and to be interpreters in dealing with these crimes. I’m sure there are some who would jump at the chance. But it would take some ACTIVE recruiting on the part of the Korean police authorities to find these people. The problem is that Koreans can’t seem to fathom the idea that many of the people who come from these countries are highly educated, intelligent and moral people. It’s so much easier to just ignore them and let them do the dirty work.
It sounds like Detective Kim wants a separate set of human rights for foreigners, or none at all.
Next thing ya know the cops won’t even be able to beat confessions out of them darkie foreigners.
You see, it all depends on your passport. Wrong passport means you get the broomstick stuck behind your knees with legs folded while they jump on top of your thighs, and that’s just for starters.
Passports with “juice” get respect, though they would love to lay it on us too.
*S*P*A*R*K*L*I*N*G*
more white guys complaining…great.
More Koreans pretending to understand things like human rights, great.
“887 Interpreters”
I wonder where one of the Englishee Interpreters were when the police arrived at my house while my former employer hired a locksmith, entered my home, took my luggage out to the street? Of course this was all after I was fired illegally and not paid salary owed to me.
That would be called getting 2 sides of the story during typical police call. What would my side have meant to the police anyway?
Koreans don’t trust the cops to respect their humans rights, so why should foreigners? Remember, these are the guys who used to throw university professors out the window and couldn’t find a cop who had a warrant in his name for torturing student activists despite the fact he was hiding in his house.
How is what these three did in the police station any different than what goes on there with the usual Korean suspects every night of the week? Every time I walk past a police station after 10 at night someone has someone else by the throat or there are chairs flying around.
#14,
Bingo!
It would be interesting to see a Korean language version of this story. I have a feeling these two statements make no more sense in Korean than they do in English. As #14 noted, Korean criminal suspects go berserk in police stations, too.
Ask, and you shall receive:
And
To put the last one in a different way, because foreigners know Koreans are wary of being called racist, some foreign criminals start crying “human rights” whenever they’re caught.
Thanks for going to the trouble, Robert. The statements don’t seem any more logical in Korean than they do in English.
Korean law enforcement’s argument for denying human rights and due process to foreigners use the same “reasoning” as the arguments we’ve heard from the Bush administration regarding the treatment of terror suspects.
Aren’t nearly all of the “phishing” crimes committed by those fluent in Korea, by necessity?
“Korean criminal suspects go berserk in police stations, too.”
That’s okay for Koreans because they have “han”!
#9 was right. It’s not so bad for us light skinners with first world passports. Woe be the suspect who is from Bangladesh or whatever- they can expect to have any sort of rights trampled all over and get confessions beat out of them:
http://free-ali.blogspot.com/2.....chive.html
So who do they think is likely to suffer (or care) when John Q. Dumbass-Foreigner starts making spurious accusations of racism against local law enforcement? The police? Society? Korea’s “sparkling” image? I doubt there would even be an internal affairs (do Korean police even have IA?) investigation into it, unless there was some video of some cop with a broomstick and a tub of Vaseline(tm).
Re: #19, many big time cyber criminals call Russian their mother tongue though, yes, kornet and hanaro support a lot of phishing experts.
#21: “….So who do they think is likely to…(…care) when John Q. Dumbass-Foreigner starts making spurious accusations of racism against local law enforcement? The police? Society? Korea’s “sparkling” image?…”
Maybe these guys?
http://www.ahrchk.net/index.php
(My question mark is a genuine one, you-all resident in Asia can tell me if you think the Asian Human Rights Commission swings a big PR stick or not).
I haven’t heard of Russian involvement in phishing in Korea, though. Do you have stats on that?
All I’m aware of is the involvement of 조선족.
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