Abstract
Korea has maintained National Police Agency system from the beginning of the Korean national government in 1948. However, there have been lots of needs to adopt local autonomous police systems for local government autonomy and enhancing the local police responses against the crimes and police services for the people. Eventually, from the July of year 2021, Korea launched local autonomy of the police. This thesis analyzed the legal systems of the Korean Local Autonomy Police and abstracted several policy implications for the advanced local autonomous policing. For this purpose, this thesis focused on the legal provisions of the Police Law of Korea National Police and Local Autonomy Police, in short, the Police Law of Korea. The autonomy range of the Local Police is the most important aspect of the Autonomy of the Local Police. Decentralization of the highly centralized and authoritative Korean National Police was a big issue, because of the national police has been very reluctant to respond to the demands of the local people. The result of the analysis shows a very narrow range of autonomy of the Local Police. The legal powers of the local police’s investigations for the crime incidents are restricted. Local Police has powers to investigate only several small crimes occurred in the mid level province. The committee of the Local Autonomy Police should be established in the local great city and province. The selection of the members of the committee is important affairs, because the committee controls the Local Autonomy Police. In the Police law, status of members are ensured. However, the qualification of the members needs to be classified more highly to guarantee profession of the committee. The National Police’s administrative and investigation procedure controlling over the Local Autonomy Police, analyzed on the basis of provisions of the Police Law, is too severe to be called as autonomous police system. National police Agency Chief has the special power to direct the local autonomy police. As a result, the autonomy level of the Local Autonomy Police is assessed as poor as it could not be called as a really autonomous police system. The achievement of recent Police Law’s adoption of the Local autonomy Police is just a start to be a decentralizing process of Korean Police. If we desire a fully autonomous local police system and highly responsive local police services, our police law needs some revisions to permit more autonomy and police investigation powers on the local autonomous police.
Published Version
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