In today’s global era, crime patterns have displayed an increase in the number of transnational crimes. Therefore, cooperation between nations to resolve crimes is certainly necessary. The Korean Institute of Criminology (KIC) joined the UN Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Programme Network Institutes (UNPNI) in 2004 and participated in the UN Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (CCPCJ) and the UNPNI annual meetings in order to contribute to the effort of international crime prevention by strengthening international organizations and cooperation structures.
The KIC builds cooperative networks with experts and organizations to study the latest research trends in crime and criminal justice as well as the progress that each country has made in criminal justice reform. In other words, the KIC not only has expanded its research projects related to international criminal justice but also promoted various cooperative projects through human resource and information exchanges, joint academic conferences, translation projects and English publications, and Memorandum of Understandings (MOU).
Firstly, as for the cooperation projects with the UN, the KIC has attended the UNCCPCJ annual meetings as a UNPNI member, introducing and promoting the main projects of the KIC such as VFAC and Towards AsiaJust Programme and also discussed future development with the UNODC. Particularly, in last year’s CCPCJ annual meeting, the UNODC requested an active cooperation of the KIC to act as the focal point for the collection and analysis of crime statistics in Asia. Thus, the KIC co-organized regional meetings regarding this issue. Furthermore, the KIC was asked to participate in the program to strengthen the international mutual assistance in criminal matters as a follow-up project to the AsiaJust Programme. In the 13th UN General Assembly on Prevention of Crime to be held in 2015, the KIC plans to co-host a workshop with the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) of the United States. Preparatory meetings were held for this workshop.
Secondly, the KIC has participated in and also organized various international conferences regarding international cooperation. The Anti-Corruption Forum held over two days from December 3 and 4 is particularly notable. This global forum was the largest event organized by the KIC in 2014 and provided an opportunity to discuss in depth about the ending corruption, a topic that has been on the rise in the current government, with participants from around the world. From abroad, Donald Johnston (former Secretary-General of the OECD), Francois Badie (Head of French Central Service for the Prevention of Corruption), Paul O’Brien (Deputy Assistant Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice) were invited to deliver keynote addresses and presentations. From Korea, Minister Hwang, Kyo Ahn (Ministry of Justice), Chairperson Lee, Sung Bo (Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission), Kim, Young Ran (Former Chairperson, Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission and Former Justice of the Supreme Court), and Hong, Yunsik (Vice Minister, Office for Government Policy Coordination and Director of the Eradication of Corruption Unit) joined the forum to deliver congratulatory speeches and keynote addresses.
Year after year, the number of organizations requesting to visit the KIC has been increasing. Secretary-General Yuri Fedotov of the UNODC, Jeremy Douglas from the UNODC Bangkok Office, and Donald Johnston, former Secretary-General of the OECD visited the Institute. Various universities and law enforcement agencies from around Asia requested for visits. The number of visitors to the KIC was also the highest this year than any other years.
The International Center for Criminal Justice has also especially worked hard on English publications. The English brochure that was produced in the beginning of the year was actively used for the promotion of the KIC’s international cooperation projects and went into a second print in November. Moreover, in order to provide a useful material for international organizations and professionals of the related fields, the outcomes of the research projects of the KIC from 2012 and 2013 were published in Selected Essays of the KIC Research Projects (2012-2013). The annual report of the KIC that has been published every year was also translated and published, under the title Annual Report on Crime and Criminal Policy in Korea for the years 2012 and 2013. These two publications have similar structures, maintaining the continuity of the annual reports.
Furthermore, in addition to the publication of Cybercrime in the Republic of Korea I and II in 2012 and 2013, the field of terrorism was chosen this year, and Terrorism in the Republic of Korea was published in English. This book is a report on the current state of affairs and plan of countermeasure regarding terrorism in Korea.
Such English publications are being used as promotional materials for the KIC when visiting international organizations or when international organizations come to KIC for a visit. Their PDF files also have been uploaded in the English website in order to allow international researchers and website users to easily access materials related to crime and criminal policy in Korea.
The bi-monthly magazine VFAC Review is also being published as part of the VFAC project, a representative project of the KIC. Not only has VFAC Review been used as a promotional material, but it has become a useful material in the field of cybercrime prevention as it contains information on recent trends of cybercrime, upcoming conferences on cybercrime, and the latest researches in related fields.
In 2014, the VFAC project has focused more on research networks, intellectual networking, and the publication of VFAC Review rather than online lectures. With regards to the online lectures, we ran into the practical difficulty of having to transfer contents related to the quickly-changing methods and preventive measures of cybercrimes. As a solution to this difficulty, we changed the existing online lectures into an archive structure, so that professionals of related fields can access them. At the same time, we put in the effort to strengthen the networks by re-creating the VFAC website to be more user-friendly, quickly updating cybercrime-related contents on the website, and actively engaging in SNS such as Facebook and Twitter. We also worked hard to regularly publish VFAC Review and to include high-quality research papers.
In the project of “International Cooperation for Crime Prevention,” the International Center for Criminal Justice has been continuing to expand exchanges and cooperation with advanced international organizations as well as emerging countries in Asia. Such efforts and achievements of the International Center have contributed to situating the KIC as the hub of criminal policy research. The KIC also continues to visit advanced institutions, holds joint international symposium and conducts joint projects, maintaining good international relations. Through continuous cooperative exchanges with advanced institutions and research centers, the KIC will devote itself to promote the status of Korea and the KIC on the world stage in international criminal justice.
This annual report has collected, analyzed and reported various materials on international cooperation activities over the past year. It also provides the projects that have been promoted in the past year by clearly organizing and analyzing them. Based on and expanding upon such experiences of international cooperation and exchange, the KIC hopes to become a world-renowned institution in preventing crimes in the nearest future.