earticle

영어

In accordance with the trend of globalization, liberalization, and economic uncertainty, the scale of international migration has been growing as well. In reflection of such trend, the population of immigrants has sharply risen in recent years, and the number of foreigners staying for a long time in South Korea have also continued to grow. In particular, after the number of foreigners exceeded one million in 2007, it surpassed 1,890,000 as of December 2015. It is no exaggeration to say that South Korea is a society where multiple cultures coexist with those from multiple racial groups. Along with the increase of these foreigners staying in Korea, various issues have emerged too, including violent crimes such as murder, robbery, rape, molestation, assault, injury, etc., as well as fraud crime, traffic crime, illegal immigration and related enforcement and administration, foreigners’ obtaining and losing citizenship, etc. In particular, the crimes committed by foreign residents are becoming increasingly cruel, brutal, intelligent, and organized, and their techniques are growing sophisticated and tricky. As a result, the anxiety of the Korean people against crimes by foreigners has been intensifying, and they are demanding the government’s powerful sanctions and punishments targeting crimes by foreigners to relieve their anxiety. However, despite the demands of the people, a number of issues are left to be addressed, such as the difficulties of grasping the actual status of crimes committed by foreign residents and collecting information on them, lack of police manpower for international criminal investigations, language problems, human rights issues, conflicts caused by cultural and religious differences, and xenophobia. Hence, this paper attempted to propose various countermeasures for the issues discussed herein based on the recognition of the challenges. In particular, it aimed to present the alternatives focusing on the police response to crimes by foreign residents.