• Korean Security Journal
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• no.58
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• pp.9-34
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• 2019

The Korean Police Force is equipped with the dual responsibility to not only protect the constitutional right to protest, but also prevent potential disorder and misconduct might be caused by the abuse of such a right. To this end, the Korean national police employ the crowd counting methodology, termed 'Maximum Figure at Any One Time' with a view to dispatching the proportionate number of police officers to protest scenes for safety management. However, protest organizers rather take advantage of 'Cumulative Figure' methodology, the purpose of which being to publicize the wide recognition of success, noticeably by demonstrating that as many people as possible support for their cause or voice. Hence, different estimates generated by different methods have raised serious political issues in Korean society. Nevertheless, it is found out that there are only three existing academic studies in Korea regarding crowd counting methods, and they are mainly geared towards comparing the two methods, unfortunately without any attempt to analyze the foreign literature in details. Keeping the research gap in mind, the research conducts a comprehensive review of the foreign literature with relation to protest crowd counting methods. Derived from the review and analysis, the counting methods can be broadly categorized into the three models such as: 1) Grid/Density Model, 2) Moving Crowds Model, and 3) Electronic & Non-Image Model. In the end, the research provides brief explanations regarding specific research findings per each model, and further, suggests some policy implications for the development of more accurate crowd counting methodology at protests in Korea.