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| Investigators examine drug samples confiscated from narcotics offenders at Suwon District Prosecutors Office in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, April 7. Newsis |
By Lee Hae-rin
The National Forensic Service (NFS) will form a new division to tackle the growing number of narcotics rimes in Korea. The government already allocated a portion of next year's budget to form such a division, according to the Ministry of Interior and Safety, Sunday.
The new division, which will be composed of about 10 officials, will be established next year if the National Assembly passes the budget by the end of this year.
On top of the establishment of the division, the budget will be used to purchase new drug testing equipment and develop a drug monitoring platform.
Currently, the NFS has no separate division dedicated to drugs. The forensic toxicology division has carried out assessments and studies on drugs, along with six institutes across the country.
The creation of the new division is expected to make drug investigations more efficient and enable more related research, the NFS said.
The budget allocated for the new division includes 2.1 billion won ($1.5 million) for the purchase of four machines that can assess drugs with a tenfold higher measurement sensitivity and accuracy than existing equipment.
Introducing these new machines will make the government's countermeasures against drug-related crimes quicker and more efficient by enabling the assessment of many types of drugs by using smaller samples, the NFS said.
Another billion won will be spent on a three-year development plan for a platform that monitors international drug trends. The country has seen over a hundred types of new undefined drugs in the past two years.
The measures come amid a sharp increase in narcotics crimes and the emergence of new drugs.
The NFS has made over 80,000 narcotics assessments in the past year and the figure has doubled over the past five years. For seven years, the agency has been requesting the creation of a separate workforce and division dedicated solely to narcotics crimes.
According to the Supreme Prosecutors' Office's 2022 narcotics crime report, the number of drug-related criminals hit a record-high of 18,385 last year, up 13.9 percent from 2022.
According to the NFS' drug assessment report, the domestic narcotics market is growing at an alarming rate, with the emergence of new kinds of drugs, while the consumers of drugs are becoming younger. The greatest proportion of drug abusers were in their teens and 20s.
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