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

The fleeing of a policewoman from the scene of a knife attack on a family has left the nation once again questioning the competence of its law enforcers

In a land where gun crime is rare and surveillance cameras near ubiquitous, critics say it has become all too easy for the police to let their standards drop

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Police officers in Seoul, South Korea. Photo: AP

Published: 10:45am, 18 Dec 2021

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.

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”.