'I wouldn't do your job': Inmates pity Korean prison officers as dire conditions test their resolve

Cheongju Women’s Prison, the only women’s correctional facility in North Chungcheong Province, remains lit around the clock on July 22. Korea Times photo by Jo So-jin

By Hankookilbo

• Published Aug 4, 2026 4:15 PM KST

At Cheongju Women’s Prison, silence never lasts long.

A sharp beep cut through the quiet, and a two-way radio crackled to life. An urgent voice came through.

“Code One in Unit 4. Backup requested.”

Code One meant an altercation. The urgent call over the prison officer’s radio was immediately followed by a flurry of other transmissions. Beep. “Unit 1, inmate 6128 en route to a legal visit.” Beep. “Unit 2 returning from exercise.”

The constant beeping was then joined by a new bell sound, signaling an incoming call over the intercom connecting inmates to the prison’s security office. On a call panel mounted on the office wall, a red light flashed above the button for Cell 3. An inmate’s voice came over the intercom.

“Officer, I have a painful bump on my butt. Can I have some medicine?”

The officer sitting behind the monitors, her hair tightly pulled back, did not even look away from the screens. As this reporter watched, she gave only a curt reply, “Wait,” before punching a button to call Cell 5.

“Inmate 6128. You have a legal visit.”

Another screen was showing an inmate lying on the floor. She pressed a button again.

“Inmate 6200. Sit up. Now.”

Suddenly, shouts erupted in the corridor. The officer paused to listen, then suddenly leaped from her chair and rushed outside. When she returned a few minutes later, her glasses were fogged with sweat and moisture.

Also demanding her attention was a stack of request slips from inmates. The requests ranged widely, from asking to be moved to another cell and requesting medicine to seeking a meeting with an officer.

As she worked through one slip, several more came in. Radios beeped continuously, the intercom rang and the CCTV feeds kept changing. Whenever noise broke out in the corridor, she dashed outside.

The tension inside the prison was relentless, the anxiety gnawing.

During one intercom call, an inmate pleaded for a cell transfer.

“Please move me to a single cell,” she said. “I can’t live through this heat.”

She shared a 16.62-square-meter cell with 11 other inmates. Nearly two-thirds of her gray shirt was soaked with sweat.

Overcrowding was a major problem at Cheongju Women’s Prison, where as of the end of July, it was housing 760 inmates despite being designed to accommodate 619, operating at 23 percent over capacity. But the officer was adamant.

“Everyone’s hot. It’s hard on everyone.”

She proceeded to pressing another button.

“Inmate 6322. Don’t wash your hands in the toilet.”

The inmate was mentally ill and had defecated in the sink the previous day. She slowly raised her head and, with a vacant stare, stammered into the camera:

“Officer… please, just hear me out.”

The officer stood from her chair and headed to the disciplinary cell. In the smelly cell, she crouched beside the inmate, her hair greasy and her uniform stained. She spoke with the inmate — all the time, radio transmissions kept coming in and the intercom in the office continued to ring.

Throughout the three days The Hankook Ilbo spent shadowing correctional officers at the prison, scenes like these played out over and over as if someone had hit the repeat button. Before they could hear one inmate out, another was already calling.

Nights are harder

“Why do you look so dazed? We’re only getting started.”

After looking at this reporter's face, the officer on the night shift laughed. It was 5 p.m. on July 20, and the night shift was getting ready.

But the moment of laughter was short-lived as the handover began. Every irregularity from the previous shift was reviewed, as well as which inmates required special attention, such as those with mental illness, at risk of self-harm and in cells where fights frequently break out.

The security division at Cheongju Women’s Prison guards the housing units around the clock. That night, just 18 correctional officers were responsible for more than 700 inmates.

As the clock passed 5 p.m., the night shift began. The sun was slowly setting, but the heat still lingered. Inside the housing units, the temperature stood at 31 degrees Celsius and humidity at 80 percent.

As the cells were locked for the evening, medication was handed out to inmates who needed it. One in three inmates was taking psychiatric medication. Officers had to watch until each inmate swallowed her pills, making sure she had not hidden them in her mouth. Persuading those who refused was also part of the job.

At 9 p.m., the corridor lights went out, leaving only dim nightlights on. Inside the cells, the bathroom lights were the only ones left on.

In a cramped cell, arguments broke out over something as simple as laying out their bedding. Two inmates began shouting at each other. Officers stepped in, broke up the fight and calmed them down before returning to the security office.

Throughout the night, officers patrolled every housing unit in pairs, checking whether each inmate is in her assigned place and looking for any signs of self-harm.

They slowed down every cell door, scanning the room and checking to make sure the inmates were breathing normally. If someone was in the bathroom too long, the officers stopped and waited until they could confirm she was safe.

That night, the warm temperature meant the inmates struggled to fall asleep. Many tossed and turned, while some clutched plastic detergent containers filled with cold water, using them as makeshift pillows to get through the night.

At 1 a.m., an officer suddenly stopped outside of a cell. There was one less inmate than there should have been.

The officer calmly switched the lights in the toilet off and on a couple of times. A hand was raised across the frosted glass inside the toilet. Only then did the officer resume patrolling.

Every 20 to 30 minutes, something would occur somewhere in the units. When a slamming sound was heard, officers rushed to the spot. When a nervous call came through an intercom, explanations and reassurances were offered. Coming across an inmate who seemed distressed, officers checked to make sure they were alright.

As the night wore on, the duty log filled with incidents.

In one instance, an inmate demanded to have her blood pressure checked, saying the heat had sent it soaring. The reading came back normal. The inmate insisted the monitor must be broken.

The officer tried it on herself. It read 169 over 120, higher than the inmate’s.

“No wonder I’ve had a headache all day,” she said with a laugh, but the exhaustion was plain on her face.

“After my first night shift, I went home and threw up,” the officer said. “Even now, I practically pass out the moment I get home.”

Another officer, a 15-year veteran, knew the feeling.

“Having to stay on edge every second really wears you down.”

For the officers, a quiet night doesn't mean an easy one. Getting through the night without an incident still meant staying alert, watching for any sign that an inmate might harm herself or that a fight might break out. The unrelenting tension was slowly wearing the officers down.

At 1:30 a.m., we were finally given a break. Earlier, this reporter had confidently declared that staying up all night would be no problem but by then had reached the limit.

A first-year officer entered the break room, collapsed onto a bed and fell asleep without even taking off her socks.

Minds wear down before bodies do

In the overcrowded prison, frustration and anger easily build among inmates, fueled by poor living conditions, the strain of confinement and mental illness. Front-line officers bear the brunt of those emotions as they come crashing down in the form of grievances, protests, lawsuits and criminal complaints. Officers said their minds wore down before their bodies did.

The working conditions only add to the strain. Throughout their shifts, officers are cut off from the outside world. Even their phones are off-limits.

For hours, they move constantly between inmates, radios, intercom calls and CCTV monitors. Psychological exhaustion has become so severe that one in four correctional officers is classified as being at risk of mental health problems.

Another officer, a 20-year veteran, opened a desk drawer and showed this reporter a police decision clearing the officer of wrongdoing. An inmate had filed a criminal complaint accusing the officer of causing injury through negligence, claiming she was hurt while being handcuffed after she became violent.

The police declined to pursue charges, but the officer had to undergo questioning, track down and submit the duty logs from that day and explain why restraining the inmate had been necessary.

“One inmate sought a court injunction barring us from approaching her simply because we would not let her lie down,” the officer said, giving a hollow laugh. “Some even enlist fellow inmates to join them in filing criminal complaints or formal grievances against us.”

Correctional officers call the practice of repeatedly filing complaints against them “nose-ringing,” comparing it to fitting a ring through a cow’s nose to control it.

“The inmates themselves call it throwing an egg against a rock,” the officer said. “You may not break the rock, but you can still smear it.”

Some complaints travel beyond the prison walls, reaching the government’s online petition service, the National Human Rights Commission of Korea, the police and the courts. Most result in no charges or are closed without referral to prosecutors. But each time, officers must compile documents explaining their actions and submit to questioning.

Over the past decade, inmates filed 7,616 criminal complaints naming 15,788 correctional officers. The annual number rose 22.7 percent, from 622 in 2024 to 763 last year.

Excluding cases still under investigation, only five officers, or 0.03 percent of those named in complaints, were indicted. Two others received suspended indictments.

"We joke that we're in the 'luck business,'" the officer said with a bitter smile. "Every shift, we just hope nothing happens on our watch. It's like sitting on a time bomb, praying it doesn't go off while you're on duty."

Faith put to the test

Kim Bong-young, the warden of Cheongju Women’s Prison, said she became a correctional officer hoping she could turn around the life of even one person. Many officers entered the profession for the same reason.

But these days, Kim often hears inmates say, “I wouldn’t do your job even if they paid me tens of millions of won.”

As this reporter strolled across the office, one officer's desk drew attention. On the desk was a line from a letter written by her child.

“My mom protects our society. She keeps bad people from getting out. So I’m giving her the ‘Best Protector Award.’”

The desire to protect society was what led them to become correctional officers but inside the iron gates, their mission had been reduced to making it through each shift without anything going wrong. Even that was becoming increasingly difficult.

At 9 a.m., the night shift officers slowly made their way toward the prison gates. Now dressed in civilian clothes, they walked in silence, their shoulders slumped.

The day shift entered and unlocked the housing units. The radios began beeping again.

This article from the Hankook Ilbo, the sister publication of The Korea Times, is translated by a generative AI system and edited by The Korea Times.