Police struggle with rising crime among foreigners

By Kim Boram
SEOUL, Oct. 9 (Yonhap) -- Crimes committed by foreigners increased almost 60 percent over the past four years but police are too understaffed to handle the uptick in cases, a report here said Thursday.

The number of cases, including murder, robbery and fraud, rose from 9,103 in 2004
to 14,524 last year, or an average of 30 crimes a day by non-Koreans, according
to the report presented by the National Police Agency to ruling party lawmaker
Kwon Kyung-seok.
A total of 11,085 crimes by foreigners have been reported for this year as of end
of July.
Chinese accounted for 55.8 percent of the 56,411 crimes between 2004 and July of
this year, followed by Americans (6.9%), Thais (2.5%), Russians (2.4%) and
Pakistanis (1.6%).
But the report cited serious manpower and logistic shortcomings in dealing with
these crimes. The agency has 545 detectives working in foreigner-related crime
divisions, with 825 officers who can speak a foreign language but only 105 who
know a language other than English, Japanese or Chinese, the report said.
The rising number of crimes by foreigners was attributed to the increasing
foreign population in Korea in recent years following eased customs controls to
promote the nation's tourism and trade industry.
According to police, the number of illegal aliens is also on the increase, due in
part to the prevalence of fraudulent marriages.
"As more than one million foreigners are living in Korea and 230,000 aliens
reside here illegally, we need to come up with measures to handle their crimes, "
said Rep. Kwon. "The government should train more expert investigators who speak
foreign languages."
brk@yna.co.kr
(END)