Jung Min-ho has worked as a staff writer at The Korea Times since 2012, mostly covering social and political issues. He currently belongs to the Politics & City Desk where he covers topics such as health, labor and human rights. Prior to joining the team, he was responsible for covering North Korea and sports. His article about a biosecurity breach of Middle East respiratory syndrome won him an award from the Korea Science Journalists Association in 2016. He is also the co-author of the book, "Medical Pioneers of Korea" (2019). He served as the head of the international relations committee at the Journalists Association of Korea from 2021 to 2023.
INTERVIEW Inside Korea's plan for AI-aided prisons
Korea Correctional Service Commissioner General Lee Hong-yeon / Courtesy of Ministry of Justice
By Jung Min-ho
Correction chief outlines vision for using tech to prevent violence, detect warning signs
Korean prisons of the future will be equipped with artificial intelligence (AI) that can quickly identify warning signs of violence, self-harm and escape, as the Ministry of Justice moves to build a data-driven correctional management system.
Lee Hong-yeon, chief of the Korea Correctional Service, described the project as a shift from a reactive model — responding after an incident occurs — to a preventive one backed by data analysis, which he believes will help the institution achieve its broader goals of preventing incidents, reducing reoffending and protecting prison staff.
“AI correctional administration is not simply about introducing new technology,” Lee said in a recent written interview with The Korea Times. “It is a transition toward preventive and scientific methods that identify risks in advance and provide individualized correctional treatment and rehabilitation support suited to each inmate’s characteristics and needs.”
Under the plan, AI tools would help staff spot changes in an inmate’s behavior, assess key risk factors and identify necessary interventions more quickly. The system is also intended to support routine administrative work, including searches of laws and administrative rules and report drafting.
“The correctional information system has accumulated a broad range of data on prisoners, including their counseling and behavioral-observation records, disciplinary actions, medical information and treatment histories. By analyzing this data in combination, AI could detect early signs of risk, such as a recent increase in aggression or repeated hostile remarks toward correctional officers,” Lee said.
The initiative is part of the government’s 2026-30 correctional policy agenda, which has four main objectives: reducing reoffending, easing prison overcrowding, establishing advanced correctional systems and improving working conditions for correctional officers.
Those results would be delivered to frontline workers as prompts for interventions such as targeted counseling or psychological treatment. But Lee said the technology would not be used to automatically label certain prisoners as dangerous or claim to predict incidents with certainty — a task that requires comprehensive human experience and judgment.
The ultimate goal of the reform, he said, is not to replace correctional officers’ judgment but to allow them to spend more time on work that requires human expertise.
“AI’s role is to provide correctional officers with reliable information needed for decision-making. A prisoner’s treatment or parole will not be determined solely on the basis of AI analysis, and the service plans to document and manage the entire process, including what data was used and for what purpose,” he said. “As we run it, accuracy and error rates will be continually compared across different groups to check for bias. Before the deployment of the platform, we also plan to conduct reliability testing to ensure that incorrect risk alerts do not exceed an acceptable threshold.”
A rendering of a future, AI-aided prison / Courtesy of Ministry of Justice
That safeguard is significant because algorithmic risk assessments can influence prisoners’ treatment, parole prospects and, ultimately, their liberty. Lee said AI analysis would not by itself determine treatment or parole outcomes, and that the service would maintain records of the data used and the purpose for which they were used throughout the decision-making process.
The ministry has also been looking abroad to find ways to utilize technology to enhance its prison management system. On July 29, it held an international workshop in Seoul with government officials and experts from other countries to discuss AI applications.
Lee said Korea could learn from Japan’s use of AI video analysis to detect abnormal behavior and prevent security incidents, as well as Britain’s efforts to prevent erroneous prisoner releases and develop structured AI ethics and validation practices.
“One of the strengths of Korea’s correctional administration is that its internal network has accumulated a wide range of information on prisoners over many years … If this data can be securely linked and analyzed, it could offer a more comprehensive picture of changes in prisoners’ conditions and emerging risk indicators,” Lee said. “If we can develop this into a Korean AI model whose effectiveness and safety have been validated in frontline settings, I believe it could become a leading example for other countries.”