Why is South Korea, one of world's safest countries, losing trust in police?

When two police officers responded to a complaint about noise at a public apartment complex in Incheon, South Korea, last month, little could they have known how events would spiral out of control.

How, by the time the day was out, a mother would be left clinging to life after being stabbed in the neck; or that the reputation of the police force itself would be left hanging by a thread by their botched response.

Yet what transpired over the course of that day in mid-November has done much to undermine the nation's confidence in the men and women in charge of protecting it, raising questions over the reliability, effectiveness and motivation of a force that critics say has become too comfortable and complacent amid some of the lowest crime rates in Asia.

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On arrival at the apartment complex, the two officers had found a family of three in distress at the behaviour of their upstairs neighbour, who they said was showing signs of threatening behaviour. The officers then split the family up, one of them taking the father to the ground floor to interview him.

While this was happening, the upstairs neighbour - a 48-year-old man - came down and attacked the remaining family members with a knife, but instead of leaping to their defence the remaining police officer fled the scene in terror.

It was left to the father himself, on hearing the screams of his family, to confront and subdue the attacker. However, he was too late to prevent the man from slashing his daughter's face and stabbing his wife in the neck. The wife lost consciousness in the attack and doctors say there is a high chance she will be left brain-dead.

Public outrage over the incident has been fuelled by an admission by the police officer who fled the scene - who was just six months in to the job at the time - that she had failed to use her taser gun or baton because she was "frightened".

Both officers have been dismissed, as has their supervisor, a senior superintendent of the district police station, and the commissioner of the Incheon Police Agency resigned as well. But these moves have done little to placate the public's anger.

News of the attack has gone viral, fuelled in part because it taps into growing criticisms of the police force, which has been hit by a string of incidents in which its officers appeared ineffective.

In 2019, the police came in for widespread criticism after a video emerged of a knife attack outside a Seoul subway station in which a responding officer appeared reluctant to use his taser gun. A year earlier, a police officer in North Gyeongsang province died while responding to a knife rampage, again having refrained from using his gun or taser.

This apparent reluctance to use firearms appears deeper than any knee jerk social media response, and is borne out by statistics collected by the police force itself. A survey by the Police Science Institute in 2018 found 97 per cent of police officers felt reluctant to use their firearms, even in dire situations, citing strict firearm protocols and the possibility of disciplinary action should something go wrong, the Yonhap news agency reported.

The latest incident has many among the public once again questioning the merit and reliability of the police.

As one Instagram user put it, "In our country, I have to protect my own body."

Another said, "More than merely firing people, a reform in police education seems more pressing, or nothing will change."

A survey taken shortly before the incident in Incheon, released by the police agency in November, showed just 52.9 per cent of people trusted the police and only 36.8 per cent said the police had "integrity".

"In our country, instead of feeling safe around police, we question whether they will be able to protect us or handle the situation appropriately," said Jung Se-jong, a professor of police administration at Chosun University. "Our police officers lack professionalism and a sense of duty."

Such feelings are driven in part by grim statistics. According to the police agency, while the overall rate of arrests fell between 2009 and 2011, the number of rapes and indecent assaults rose during the same period. And a 2018 report by the police agency found that nearly half of all crimes (48.9 per cent) committed by civil servants were committed by police. Offences included assault, dereliction of duties, and fraud.

Some critics say the problem is in part down to complacency. South Korea is one of the safest countries in Asia; gun crime is largely non-existent and it often feels as if there are surveillance cameras on every corner. A side effect of this safety, they say, is that it is all too easy for law enforcers to take things easy.

South Korea has one of the lowest intentional homicide rates in the Asia-Pacific region - at 0.6 it is safer even than Hong Kong (at 0.7) and far safer than the United States (at close to 5).

Jung, who enjoyed a long and distinguished career in the force as an instructor and as a police officer, said recruits today did not train as hard or expect to encounter much danger while on duty.

"They have the mindset of getting by with half-hearted effort," he said. "And due to the formal education that focuses on passing a simple test, police officers don't get enough practical training."

He lamented that police training in South Korea did not include sharp shooting drills with moving targets - something that is seen as one of the basics in countries with strong forces such as the United States.

Pointing to the knife attack last month, as well as the attacks in 2018 and 2019, Jung said such incidents, along with the police's culture of being too cautious and unassertive, had weakened the force's image.

This in turn hit morale, leading to a vicious circle of sorts as officers' pride and sense of duty diminished.

"The public has a very low perception of police in the country," Jung said. "Among civil service jobs, getting into the police force has been relatively easy [compared to other departments], and this shows with police officers tending to have lower educational degrees."

According to the Ministry of Personnel Management's 2018 report on the civil service, nearly 80 per cent of civil servants in the country were educated to college level or above. Among police officers and firefighters, only 65 per cent had a college education.

Another aspect of the problem, critics say, is that civil service jobs - which are among the most desired jobs in the country - are prized for providing stable incomes and guaranteed pensions. Many applicants are seeking the quiet life, rather than the adrenaline rush of danger that police work can sometimes involve.

The neighbourhood of Noryangjin in Seoul is home to numerous police prep schools, servicing thousands of young students hoping to pass the police entrance exam.

This consists of a multiple choice exam based on a variety of subjects (including Korean history, English, constitutional law, penal law and police science) and a basic physical test of an applicant's ability in push-ups, sit-ups, a 100m and 1,000m run, and a dynamometer test to measure arm strength.

The pass marks for women are significantly lower than for men on the physical test. For instance, to score a maximum of 10 on the 100m dash, a man must run under 13 seconds; a woman under 15.5. Men need to do 58 sit-ups and push-ups in one minute to get a top score; women must do 55 sit-ups and 50 push-ups.

Critics say the standards are set too low.

"I've always had reservations about the police force's tendency to disregard a recruit's physical abilities to suppress a criminal," said Ha Min-seo, a 22-year-old student who plans on taking the police exam next year and who has dreamed of becoming an officer since she was young.

"As a woman preparing to join the force, I was greatly disappointed at seeing policewomen displaying incompetence at the scene."

Despite the bad PR the police have received of late, there is no shortage of officers ready to defend the profession.

Many point out that most of the burdens faced by officers tend to go unseen by members of the public; that the many successes of the force do not get the same media attention as their - relatively few - failures.

Officer Kim Han-pil (a pseudonym), who has been stationed in Seoul for five years, said media reports tended to gloss over the more challenging sides of the job.

"We have to deal with suicides, fights, rape cases and other gloomy situations on a regular basis," he said, adding that many of his fellow officers had to deal with PTSD and other forms of psychological stress from the horrors they had witnessed and their long hours working nights.

As for perceptions that police were reluctant to use force, he said people "shouldn't only blame the police officers. It's the ineffective system, the law and the public's perception that are not allowing enough force to be used in situations. We are restrained from giving a hundred per cent."

Kim, who joined the force later in his professional life after years in sales, defended his choice of career and his colleagues by painting a stark contrast to his experience of the corporate world.

Said Kim: "Instead of stepping on one another for promotions, manipulating clients and grovelling to one's superior, I found comradeship, pride in my job and a sense of goodwill."

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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