Police to Keep Male Recruit Preference

The Korean National Police Agency (KNPA) announced that it will not accept the National Human Rights Committee of Korea’s (NHRC) advice to amend the current recruiting system, which prefers men to women. It seems that the KNPA will be the target of criticism because of this recent announcement.

The KNPA said that it sent a written response to the NHRC on June 9, which stated, “Almost 80 percent of police operations require physical confrontations and fights with criminals. Also, a majority of the female officers prefer to work in the office because of childbirth and child rearing issues. Therefore, it would be hard to manage human resource in an efficient way if we were to hire more female officers than we have presently.”

In January, the NHRC urged the Commissioner General of the KNPA to modify the current recruiting system, claiming, “It is a violation of the privilege of equality to recruit more men than women in a striking gap. Also, one’s performance is not defined by one’s sexuality. Therefore, the reason for assigning more seats for men than women is not convincing enough.”

Currently, the KNPA assigns 20 to 30 percent of the position of police officer to females, and 10 percent of recruitment for police cadet and the police academy to females.

An official of the KNPA states, “If we get rid of the current female quota system, it will become more difficult for women to pass the exam to become a police officer. However, the National Police Agency is working on a plan to increase the number of female officers by up to 10 percent by 2014.”

Currently, there are 4,600 female officers in Korea, which account for 4.8 percent of the total and only 770 of them take part in criminal cases and investigations.

The NHRC is planning to make this issue public by holding an open debate.

To join the police force, one is required to possess some qualifications. Male applicants should be taller than 167 centimeters and weigh more than 55 kilograms. Female applicants should be taller than 157 centimeters and weigh more than 45 kilograms. Also, all applicants should not be color-blind and are not allowed to have tattoos. However, the NHRC has recommended abolishing such qualifications, and the KNPA has said that it is planning to ease the restrictions.

Jae-Myoung Lee egija@donga.com