Jinju City Proves Itself as a 'Safe City' in Ministry of the Interior and Safety Safety Index Evaluation

Grade 3 or Higher in Four Categories of the Regional Safety Index

On January 14, Jinju City in South Gyeongsang Province announced that it received a grade of 3 or higher in four out of six categories-traffic accidents, fires, public safety, and suicide-in the 2025 Regional Safety Index released by the Ministry of the Interior and Safety.

The Regional Safety Index is a relative evaluation indicator that assesses the safety levels of local governments by category-traffic accidents, fires, crime, public safety, suicide, and infectious diseases. The closer the grade is to 1, the higher the safety level.

This year, Jinju City received a grade of 3 for traffic accidents, 3 for fires, 5 for crime, 2 for public safety, 3 for suicide, and 4 for infectious diseases. Notably, the traffic accident category improved by one grade compared to the previous year, which is attributed to several factors: increased budget for local traffic safety environment improvement projects, higher seatbelt usage rates, and a decrease in the rate of drunk driving incidents.

View of Jinju City Hall.

Additionally, the grades for crime and infectious diseases remained the same as the previous year. In the case of crime, the city actively supported the police by significantly expanding crime prevention CCTV and improving stress awareness rates. Through close cooperation with the police, including crime prevention campaigns and increasing the number of voluntary crime prevention officers, the number of incidents for all five major crimes decreased.

However, theft accounted for 65.1% and violence for 32.6% of all crime cases. The city plans to strengthen crime prevention activities in high-risk areas in cooperation with the police, who are in charge of crime management.

For infectious diseases, the public health center's efforts in managing statutory infectious diseases, increasing the rate of personal hygiene practices, and raising the rate of health checkup participation led to improvements in the "risk and awareness indicators."

Above all, the shift toward improvement in detailed evaluation indicators (risk, vulnerability, mitigation, awareness) for crime and infectious diseases is analyzed as the result of discovering and implementing customized projects following the Ministry of the Interior and Safety and the National Disaster Management Research Institute's "Customized Regional Safety Level Improvement Consulting" conducted last year.

Last year, Jinju City formed and operated a "Task Force (TF) Promotion Team" consisting of three agencies-city, police, and fire department-and 22 departments to improve the regional safety index, continuously carrying out 50 customized safety index improvement projects.

In particular, hosting the Regional Safety Index Forum, revitalizing the Public-Private Safety Management Cooperation Committee, implementing regional safety level improvement consulting (carried out by the National Disaster Management Research Institute), and broadcasting citizen campaign videos for vulnerable areas (traffic accidents, crime, infectious diseases) have all had a positive effect on improving grades across all six categories of the regional safety index.

Shin Jindong, Head of the Regional Safety Research Team at the National Disaster Management Research Institute, stated, "In the case of Jinju City, overall safety index levels have improved over the past year through professional consulting, safety index improvement forums, and the discovery and promotion of customized projects. While it is difficult to improve safety index grades in a short period, the efforts to improve indicators will gradually be reflected in the results starting in 2026."

Meanwhile, the city plans to focus all administrative resources in 2026 on improving the indices of vulnerable categories through more proactive operation of the task force and enhanced cooperation with relevant agencies.