• Journal of forensic and investigative science
• /
• v.1 no.1
• /
• pp.11-30
• /
• 2006

The preliminary investigative activities by the police officer play a critical role in identifying the cause of death in unnatural death investigations. The failure to secure the crime scene leads to the destruction of significant evidence, which results in the difficulty or impossibility to identify the cause of death. In order to prevent this jeopardizing crucial evidence, and to identify the level of preliminary investigation on the scene, this research is conducted and analyzed with questionnaires of 300 police first responders and 100 detectives. As a result, it was disclosed that there is a possibility for first responders to fail to ensure scene security, scene observation, and canvass interviews. Besides, when medical personnel have no choice but to contaminate the crime scene in order to save lives, it is necessary for them to take photos and to take proper actions before they enter the scene. The importance of scene-control education cannot be emphasized enough in order to prevent media from entering and destroying the evidence. Through research of actual conditions of unnatural death cases which occurred in Kyongbook Province for last five years, the statistics regarding a few different types of death were analyzed as follows. Evidence that homicide, suicide, accidental death, and disaster deaths have increased year by year. Therefore, it is deemed necessary for the government to take multilateral policies to reduce them, and for police to reinforce their investigative skills. Further, the insufficient number of autopsy facilities and forensic pathologists, only 13% of the deceased (1,237 cases) have had an autopsy conducted to identify the cause of death for last five years. The other, 87.3% (8,496 cases) of the deceased, were handled through simple postmortem examination. The significance of this percentage is that there is still the possibility not revealing the cause of unjust deaths. Therefore, it is necessary to furnish police agency with the reasonable amount of funding for autopsies and maintaining enough forensic pathologists.

• Korean Security Journal
• /
• no.42
• /
• pp.361-391
• /
• 2015

Regarding the [Government Organization Act; which is legislated on 19th November, 2014] Korea Coast Guard(KCG) has been re-organized and belong from Korea Coast Guard shall be established under the Minister of Oceans and Fisheries to Ministry of Public Safety and Security. Furthermore, National Police Agency(NPA) Commissioner has the right for administer duties concerning investigation and information by succession from Korea Coast Guard Commissioner. That means that main rule has been moved from prior KCG to Ministry of Public Safety and Security(MPSS) and NPA currently which is dual structure. Meanwhile, This kind of organization change has been effective to investigative agency which exert KCG's call of duty and causes needs of variety problems. In other words, There are quite huge changes such as KCG's reduction of their work, call of duty and re-organization regarding revised government organization act. However this change - including re-organization by government, was not able to take current MPSS's special features such as organization specialty and legal rights. It means, the current change has not been taken present law system CRIMINAL PROCEDURE LAW and there was no preparation to stable maritime police authority action as well. To sum up, this revised GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATION ACT is supposed to provide total, quick security service by establishing strong disasters and safety control tower. However they only contains few area such as organization revision regarding 'Sewol Ferry Disaster', they was not able to contain the other parts of Society. Therefore, in this article I would like to check the part of re-evaluation of current change made by KCC's organization revision. It is supposed to provide better legal stability by making clear of work area by government agencies who acts maritime police authority.