Amid Shortcomings in Police Investigative Capabilities, Proposal to Establish a Law School at the Korean National Police University (KNPU) Also Floated ... Prospects Dim

[Financial News] With concerns continuing over gaps in police investigative capabilities and crime response following the implementation of the amended Criminal Procedure Act, whose key change was the abolition of prosecutors’ investigative powers, a plan to establish a law school at KNPU was floated.
On the 1st, sources in political circles and elsewhere said the proposal was discussed at a recent meeting of the Democratic Party of Korea’s (DPK) Police Reform Task Force.
The aim is to strengthen investigative capabilities by having the police train legal experts themselves.
A proposal was also made to second prosecutors to the police to provide training and other support to strengthen police legal expertise until a law school is established at KNPU.
However, this was the view of some meeting participants, and the task force is reportedly not optimistic about its feasibility.
The discussions are understood to have stemmed from concerns that the amendments to the Criminal Procedure Act could lead to adverse effects, including inadequate police investigations and the neglect of crime victims, as prosecutors can no longer directly conduct supplementary investigations into cases investigated by the police.
The lenient treatment of their own by local police, exposed in the Jang Yoon-gi case, and concerns raised in the Jeju case involving the false closure of a missing-person report about inadequate police investigations and a lax system of command and oversight also fueled public sentiment that “the police’s investigative capabilities cannot be trusted.”
The proposal to establish a law school at KNPU appears to have been raised with the aim of training legal experts within the police and first addressing public distrust of their investigative capabilities.
As of last year, only 286 of the approximately 140,000 police officers had their lawyer qualifications listed in their personnel records, accounting for about 0.2% of the total.
The police recruit lawyers through experienced-hire programs to strengthen their legal capabilities, but fail to fill all the positions each year.
From the second half of 2023 (the 12th cohort) through the first half of 2025 (the 15th cohort), the police hired fewer than half of the advertised number. In the first half of this year (the 17th cohort), 30 positions were advertised, but only 17 people were actually hired.
At least half of those hired were also found to have left before completing five years of service.

[email protected] Kim Ye-ji Reporter