Stalking murder amid crackdown puts police victim protection under fire at national audit

"Relationship crimes" — domestic violence, dating violence and stalking — dominated this year's national audit of police, as a string of victims were injured or killed by husbands or former partners despite active police protection programs. Lawmakers sharply criticized the police's victim protection measures and called for alternatives.

At the comprehensive audit of the National Assembly's Public Administration and Security Committee on Monday, Acting Korean National Police Agency Commissioner General Kim Jong-cheol said police were "working to standardize perpetrator risk-assessment indicators across all regional police agencies nationwide" to strengthen victim protection. He was responding to Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker Park Jeong-hyeon's criticism that existing measures lacked effectiveness.

Kim added that police were conducting a full investigation into 43,712 relationship crime cases nationwide, with a focus on high-risk repeat offenders.

Police are also pursuing a measure that would allow them to apply directly to courts for interim victim protection orders, bypassing prosecutors as is currently required. Kim said "routing requests through prosecutors takes considerable time," responding to Democratic Party lawmaker Lee Sang-sik's observation that crimes were occurring while prosecutors declined to file police-requested protection orders or while courts deliberated.

The police response to relationship crimes had already drawn fire at earlier regional audits. At the national audit held at the Jeju Provincial Police Agency on Thursday, Democratic Party lawmaker Kim Young-bae said it was "a very serious problem" that police had been handling stalking cases passively — citing instances where officers took a hands-off approach because victims did not want the perpetrator punished or wished to avoid formal proceedings — especially given that stalking offenses had been removed from the category of crimes requiring victim consent for prosecution.

In response, Jeju Provincial Police Agency Commissioner Kim Byeong-chan said the agency would "focus on completely separating relationship crime perpetrators from victims" and pledged to "thoroughly secure victims' personal safety through active use of detention and electronic ankle bracelet orders."

Six relationship crime fatalities have been reported in the media this month alone.

Just two days after Acting Commissioner General Kim visited a local police station on Thursday to inspect stalking victim protection practices, a man in his 40s beat a former girlfriend to death in Jung-gu, Daejeon, on Saturday. The victim had been reporting stalking since October last year and had at one point been issued an emergency alert smartwatch. Police said the case had been difficult to pursue because the victim had indicated she did not want the perpetrator punished, fearing retaliation.

According to the Korean National Police Agency, police secured 757 electronic monitoring orders against stalking suspects from January through August this year — roughly five times the 155 orders obtained in the same period last year. Detention decisions also rose 47 percent, from 607 to 893. The number of stalking and dating violence suspects apprehended during that period — 43,788 — was up 41 percent from the full-year total for last year.