[‘Minjeung Eopsneun’ Criminals] 320,000 in 5 Years... 1 Robbery Every 2 Days, 3.8 Sex Crimes Daily

Underage Murderers: 5 Last Year
17.1% of Thieves Are Minors
107 Minors Arrested for Violent Crimes
195 Behind Bars for Theft and Assault

The appearance of the inmate building at Gimcheon Juvenile Correctional Institution where juvenile inmates stay. Each floor has 10 rooms, with 4 to 7 inmates living in a space of about 5 pyeong per room. Photo by Byungdon Yoo tamond@

[Asia Economy Reporter Yoo Byung-don] 321,940. This is the number of minors arrested by the police over the past five years. On average, more than 176 children per day committed crimes and were arrested by the police.

According to the National Police Agency's '2021 Crime Statistics' released on the 22nd, the number of offenders aged 18 or younger arrested nationwide was 72,337 in 2017, 65,784 in 2018, 65,907 in 2019, 64,152 in 2020, and 53,760 in 2021. Except for 2017, these figures exclude juvenile offenders under 14 years old who are subject to juvenile law.

Until 2017, the police included those under 14 years old in the statistics, but according to juvenile offender processing regulations, juvenile offenders under the juvenile law are sent to the family court's juvenile division rather than the prosecution, so since 2018, the police have not created suspect records for them.

The number of juvenile offenders under the juvenile law separately compiled by the National Police Agency was 7,364 in 2018, 8,615 in 2019, 9,606 in 2020, and 10,915 in 2021. Including these, the total number of offenders aged 18 or younger was 73,148 in 2018, 74,522 in 2019, 73,758 in 2020, and 65,675 in 2021, significantly increasing the scale.

Looking only at the figures excluding juvenile offenders under the juvenile law, violent crimes were the most common with 92,576 cases, and theft crimes also showed a considerable number with 83,666 cases. In particular, among all offenders totaling 488,086, 17.1% of theft offenders were minors.

Additionally, in the case of violent crimes, 7.7% of all offenders were minors. Looking at last year alone, there were 5 cases of murder, 6 attempted murders, 175 robberies, 1,386 sex crimes, and 76 arson cases committed by minors, totaling 1,648 juvenile offenders. Compared to the previous year, murders increased by 3 cases, and attempted murders decreased by 1 case. On average, a minor robber was caught every two days, and nearly four minor sex offenders occurred daily.

Only last year, 107 minors were detained for violent crimes. All five minors who committed murder were detained, and three out of six attempted murderers were detained. Sixty minors were detained for sex crimes, and 38 minors were detained for robbery.

There were even more cases of detention for non-violent crimes. A total of 195 minors were detained for theft and violent crimes, with 146 for theft, 26 for violent acts, and 9 for injury. Recently, two teenagers who stole about 1 million won from three unmanned stores in Dongjak-gu, Seoul, were caught by the police, and one of them was detained.