Earlier this week I mentioned that drug statistics for Korea in 2007 were released. Now that I have had some time I decided to cruch the numbers and see what those numbers really mean. ROK Drop readers may remember my prior effort crunching numbers for 2006 as well as crunching preliminary numbers for 2007 that showed a growing drug trend in both the Korean and foreigner populations in Korea.
Now with the full 2007 statistics available I can more accurately compare foreigner drug use this past year compared to Korean drug use. Here are how the stats break down:
Koreans
Total Drug Crimes - 10,649
Per Capita - 1 drug crime per 4,601 people
The total drug number for Koreans is rising from the 2006 number of 7,711 total drug crimes. The drug of choice in Korea is the philopon methamphetamine with 8,521 arrests for the drug. Marijuana came in second with 1,170 arrests. Here are percentages of who is committing drug crimes in Korea from my prior research:
Occupation Total # Percentage
Unemployed 3,425 - 38.3%
Farmers 4104 - .6%
Businessman 350 - 3.9%
Bar Workers 129 - 1.4%
Service Job 369 - 4.1%
Bankers 24 - 0.3%
Real Estate 32 - 0.4%
Laborers 380 - 4.3%
Office Worker 717 - 8.0%
Manufacturing 142 - 1.6%
Construction 113 - 1.3%
Medical 165 - 1.8%
Transportation 143 - 1.6%
House Wife 74 - 0.8%
Movie & Arts 19 - 0.2%
Fishermen 33 - 0.4%
Students 51 - 0.6%
Unknown 1,058 - 11.8%
Others 1,306 - 14.6%
Looking at the statistics I am making the assumption that many people are using the philopon methamphetamine to stay awake when you look at the jobs with high numbers of drug busts. The high rate of farmer busted with drugs though is still a mystery to me.
Here are the final statistics for foreigner drug crimes:
Foreigners
Total Drug Crimes - 299
Per Capita - 1 drug crime per 3345 people
As you can see at the end of the year drug crimes per capita for foreigners is higher than the average Korean population. What is the cause of the rise? The Korean authorities have gotten very good at detecting drugs being mailed to foreigners in Korea. Out of the 299 foreigner arrests, 135 of them were because of people trying to receive drugs through the international mail. Like I said before who ever is working at the Incheon airport detecting this activity now, needs to be commended, given a medal, and a pay raise.
Obviously these idiots getting arrested have not been reading the ROK Drop. As I have been saying over and over again, all you potheads out there do not mail drugs to yourself in Korea! Drug laws are something that are actually stringently enforced in Korea. If you want to smoke pot get the heck out of the country. If you want to do drugs go to Thailand, but don’t do it in Korea. Go have a soju experience instead.
So who are the biggest foreign potheads in Korea you may ask? Here are the statistics of how many foreign English teachers there were in Korea as current as October 2007:
By comparing these statistics with my prior statistics of foreign drug crimes compiled through October 2007 this is how the per capita percentages work out:
Australia: 1 in 168
Canada: 1 in 185
USA: 1 in 249
U.K.: 1 in 323
New Zealand: 1 in 749
South Africa: No arrests
Ireland: No arrests
The Canadians are actually not the biggest potheads in Korea, the Aussies are, at least per capita. Hopefully by the Korean authorities cleaning house in 2007 the number of crimes will go down this year though early arrests this year suggest otherwise.
Popularity: 13%
My StumbleUpon Page
10:15 am on February 7th, 2008 1
OK, thanks for the breakdown. I’ll have to keep this in my files.
10:43 pm on February 10th, 2008 2
GI,
I don`t know if you understand the implications of the information you have posted here. You are assuming that your previous post on this matter were wrong because even at that time foreigners committed more drug related crimes that Koreans (proportionally), only they were not caught by the police, so they did not appeared in the figures.
6:32 am on February 11th, 2008 3
My last posting was for 2006 statistics and then preliminary 2007 statistics through the month of October. The Korean government just recently released their full 2007 drug statistics so I just simply updated the stats with the full 2007 from the government.
The statistics show that the foreign drug problem is mostly a problem with foreigners coming to Korea to teach English. Also interesting is that nearly half the foreign drug crimes comes from people trying to mail themselves drugs. It makes me think this activity has been going on for some time but recently the Korean authorities have gotten very good at detecting it at the airport and are now arresting people. Hopefully they get rid of the foreign drug abusers with the crackdown and the statistic will drop this year.
9:11 am on February 11th, 2008 4
Do the Corean cops patrol the hiking trails up mountains and the love motels in the countryside, or are these statistics based upon areas with high concentrations of hagwons and USFK bases? (rhetorical question)
10:13 am on February 11th, 2008 5
Silly English “teachers”.
Do your year without bitching, save more cash than you could even get paid back home, when your contract is up tell your director (who you gave no problems to) you need a vacation between contracts, go to SE Asia, smoke/pop/snort/shoot drink and screw on the cheap until your budget runs out, return to Korea, repeat cycle until an early retirement.
It seems so simple.
For the price some of these knuckleheads pay for drugs in Korea, they could hop a weekend flight to SE Asia and become a real junkie for 2 days at least once a month…
…but… no… gotta bring it back to Korea.
But, it could be worse for them. Foreigner drug busts in Dubai are up as well.
“In another case, a 43-year-old man from Middlesex was imprisoned earlier this week for four years after Dubai customs officials used highly sensitive screening equipment to detect 0.003g cannabis in the tread of his shoe. Keith Andrew Brown was stopped in transit from Ethiopia to London last September. The amount of the drug found on his shoe would not be visible to the naked eye and weighs less than a single grain of sugar.”
People who say Korans are crazy just have no perspective.
10:14 am on February 11th, 2008 6
I don’t think the Korean cops have to really focus to hard on busting foreigners with drugs when the idiots are mailing it to themselves.
10:38 am on February 11th, 2008 7
6:16 am on March 4th, 2008 8
[...] and coincidentally or maybe not, the "philopon" drug that is being abused is the same drug of choice being abused in South Korea as [...]
2:42 am on March 6th, 2008 9
10:23 am on April 1st, 2008 10
12:29 am on April 10th, 2008 11
3:56 pm on August 1st, 2008 12
Hi there - great work on the stats breakdown. Was there any information in your research about punishments and sentencing that was handed down by the KDEA in regard to foreigners caught using and trafficking or just using or just trafficking.
I would like to post some of this information on our website as an advisory for unwitting teachers who are heading over to Korea who may think only casually about having a puff or three.
If you can also provide the site you are referencing this information from I would greatly appreciate the info.