From voice verification to GPS tracking: The development of electronic monitoring in South Korea

There are many recognizable Western aspects to the contemporary criminal justice system in the Republic of Korea, but probation for adults is a relatively new development, and many of the measures which were introduced intermittently in the West over the course of the twentieth century – basic probation orders, attendance centres, community service orders and electronic monitoring, including GPS tracking – have all been introduced into Korea over the last 25 years. Korea has been a keen observer of international developments in criminal justice, but there is no long-established adult probation tradition against which EM may seem anomalous or misguided. The Ministry of Justice was formed in 1948 as part of a vast reform of government organization. According to a recent official source it has ‘mostly retained its original structure and functions while it continues to make necessary adjustments to adapt to the contemporary demands in legal affairs’ (International Legal Affairs Division 2009: 5). It has six major departments – planning and coordination, criminal affairs, legal affairs, corrections, immigration and human rights and crime prevention – all of which owed something to Western models of practice in these areas, reflecting Korea’s openness to the transfer of policy ideas from Western Europe and the United States. It nonetheless retains the death penalty, but has not used it for more than a decade. Special youth courts and probation supervision for juvenile offenders (understood as 12-20-yearolds) have existed in Korea since the 1960s, and largely had a welfare and humanist orientation, although it has always been possible to deal with juvenile offenders between the ages of 14 and 20 who commit serious violent crimes in adult courts. The government body responsible for this work (and later adult probation) – the Social Protection and Rehabilitation Bureau, formed in 1981 – has always had a public protection remit, but understood it initially in terms of meeting the welfare needs of those under its supervision, rather than punishing and controlling them. The creation of an adult probation service (and the revitalization of its youth services) is associated with the ending of military rule in Korea and the subsequent emergence of demands for more democratic, Westernized social forms.