'Civic vigilantes' rewarded more than 4,000 times last year
Scenes from 2017 Korean thriller “The Witness,” in which several people witness a serial killer committing a murder in an apartment complex. The frightened residents are unsure whether to help police find the killer.
By Ko Dong-hwan
Police paid out more than 4,000 monetary rewards to civilians who prevented crimes or helped catch suspects, according to the National Police Agency.
The agency said on Aug. 23 that rewards were paid out 4,112 times during the period ― or 11 times a day. The rewards ranged from 200,000 won ($178) to 5 million won depending on the level of contribution.
This year, 1,525 rewards were paid out between January and June. A 1 million won reward was paid to a 30-something office worker who, in May, chased and caught a man who stabbed a woman in an apartment in Nowon-gu, Seoul. A high school student at the scene who called “112” emergency was rewarded 300,000 won.
In March in Daegu, several civilians, including a bus driver, were each rewarded 200,000 won for pursuing a man who committed a murder and set the crime scene on fire. The civilians extinguished the fire, told police what the man looked like and in which direction he had fled.
In North Chungcheong Province in November 2016, 5 million won was rewarded to a person who tipped off police about a man, who killed his girlfriend and buried her body.
These acknowledged “civic vigilantes” numbered 4,162 in 2015 and 3,854 in 2016.
Whereas some vigilantes may have been driven by wanting justice to be done, others were more interested in the money.
Two months after the Sewol ferry sank off southern Korea in 2014, killing more than 300 passengers, a man told police in Suncheon, South Jeolla Province, he had found the body of Yoo Byung-eun, the former corporate magnet and heretic religious leader who was believed to be behind the ferry operator Chonghaejin Marine and was on the run. But the body had been decomposing for almost 40 days and it was impossible to confirm the identity immediately.
The man claimed he had ended the nationwide search for Yoo and that he deserved 10 million won, one fifth of the entire reward offered to locate Yoo.
But a lower court ruled that because the man had admitted he had not known the identity of the body, he therefore was not eligible for the reward. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the lower court in April this year.
The amount of rewards paid to civic vigilantes varies depending on the severity of the crime, its social repercussions and the degree to which it causes social unrest.
The reward for helping to catch a criminal whose charges could lead to life imprisonment or execution is set at 300,000 won. The reward for providing critical information about, for example, a serial killer who has murdered three or more people can be up to 500 million won.