Since its inception, the Korean Institute of Criminology (henceforth KIC) has aimed at establishing its place as a leading national and international research institute in the fields of crime prevention and criminal justice through forward-looking and multidisciplinary research. Its membership of the United Nations Programme Network of Institutes (PNIs) and robust international engagement with diverse stakeholders across the world demonstrate its years-long commitment to globalization.
In realizing the globalization, the International Strategic Research Center of the institute, in 2016, formulated a three-year action plan containing the twin visions of a) facilitating international research collaboration to incorporate international best practices and perspectives in criminology and b) increasing the dissemination of its own fruitful research outcomes.
The Center has strived to achieve the two visions encapsulated in the plan through a) strengthening the global engagement platform for introducing the latest research and policies in criminal justice to the wider Korean law enforcement community and for enabling the wide dissemination of its own research outcomes to diverse stakeholders at the international level, b) establishing the information-sharing network among legal academics and practitioners, and thereby increasing their capacities to cope with issues newly arising in criminal justice, and c) facilitating the seamless cycle of planning, formulation, implementation, uation, and feedback in the platform and network.
Especially in the year 2017, the Center laid out and implement an internal system for carrying out a coherent and organized set of activities and thereby providing for more efficient and effective research in following steps.
First, the Center monitored the uations submitted by the KIC’s key partners in domestic jurisdiction such as the Ministry of Justice (MOJ), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office (SPO), and by the internal research development taskforce, on its international enterprise and in accordance with their recommendations, expanded its organization into two specialized offices comprised of the international strategic office in charge of bilateral relations and the international public relations office in charge of multilateral relations. Second, the Center also facilitated international collaboration including human and research exchange with foreign universities, research institutes, government agencies, and the UN agencies and developed foreign language learning programs for researchers as part of efforts to improve their level of globalization. Third, the Center, above all, operates a monitoring system to review ongoing activities and reflect feedbacks onto the plan on a regular basis at the year’s end and to maintain their overall coherence and directions aligned with the available budget in close cooperation with relevant stakeholders in the national government and a performance management team of the planning and coordination office within the institute.
Building on the system-level changes, the Center conducted following activities in 2017. First, in fulfilling the mandate of the UNPNI, the Center conducted wide-ranging literature reviews on the latest research and policies in achieving specific targets of Goal 5 (Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls), Goal 11 (Make cities and human settlements inclusive, resilient, and sustainable), and Goal 16 (Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all, and build effective, accountable, and inclusive institutions at all levels) of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It also engaged with key partners in seven countries, including the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Australia, Japan, and China, to obtain information on the most current and effective criminal justice policies. Second, the Center systematically organized data of the eighteen affiliated institutes of the UNPNIs on their history, key research, and policies to provide a compilation of information on the UN-led international research collaboration. Third, the Center refashioned the KIC’s foreign language website to add new user-friendly functions and to utilize social media to strengthen communications with foreign researchers. It also published in foreign languages “KIC Research Report I and II” with summaries of major research conducted from 1989 to 2016 by in-housed researchers for their wider dissemination. Fourth, the Center in cooperation with the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the Cybercrime Observatory of the Australia National University continued to provide much-needed technical assistance to regional law enforcement agencies in countering adverse effects of cybercrimes through the project entitled, “Virtual Forum Against Cybercrime (VFAC)” and its publications entitled, “Cyber Terrorism Research Review,” and “Research-in-briefs.” Fifth, the Center utilized researchers with foreign language proficiency to compile information on criminal justice research and policies of national governments and international organizations and to provide the information to the Korean law enforcement community. Sixth, the Center expanded its research areas to include human rights in line with the newly formed priorities of the Korean national government inaugurated in the year and laid a basis for strengthening protection of fundamental rights by the Korean government by engaging with United Nations Human Rights Council and collecting the Council’s research and policies for the government policies.