The incumbent Korean government established a plan in 2013 to add 20,000 police officers to its total forces in the subsequent five years and deploy them primarily in public safety areas, including in response to school bullying and sexual violence, the protection of children and juveniles, the prevention of crimes, and the 112 All-Source Situation Room. Since then, the government has moved forward in implementing the initiative. As a result, a total of 11,281 new police officers were introduced from 2013 through 2015, with 1,901 scheduled to be added in 2016, incurring budget expenses of some KRW 1 trillion from 2013 through 2016 and KRW 1.2 trillion each year thereafter.

This measure is significant in expanding the most fundamental governmental services—the protection of people’s lives and property. Still, as the number of police officers, as well as the related overhead costs, has been increased in a large scale over the past several years, analysis on the growth process of the police force and its operation performance must play an important role in these endeavors.

In this regard, this report analyzes whether the expansion of the police force was planned in a way that suits the purpose of its scale-up, whether new police officers are hired and trained properly, and whether local police officers are adequately deployed for the sake of public safety. The review also includes ways in which positive outcomes have resulted from the measure.

Analysis shows that some effects of the effort have been identified, including the achievement of targets related to eradicating the four social evils earlier than planned. However, as the scale of the expansion was calculated without a clear link to policy goals, the standards to evaluate the scale-up results separately are imprecise. In addition, the actual training period of newly appointed police officers has been reduced to meet the hiring schedule, resulting in concerns that their expertise and safety could be undermined. Moreover, adding more police officers to local police stations has not helped enhance their patrolling functions in reality as much as expected, and the disproportionate allocation of local police officers occurs across regions.

Therefore, the government needs to further specify policy goals by function to form a baseline in calculating the adequate size of police force growth while offering a police officer operation plan based on systematic and scientific methods to calculate the appropriate scale of the police force. The speed of hiring new police officers also needs to be adjusted to ensure their training is substantial. Furthermore, to offer safety services that are evenly distributed by region, local police officers should be reallocated based on the actual safety demands and cost estimates. Their reallocation plan should be aligned with the scale-up measure, thus minimizing conflicts among local police stations.