Park Ji-won, "The majority of stalking suspects are ex-convicts... Drug crimes have a high recidivism rate."

Among all crime suspects, the rate of ex-convicts is close to 50%, and in the case of stalking and drug crime suspects, the rate of ex-convicts was found to be higher than the overall average.

According to data submitted by the Ministry of Justice and released on the 8th by Rep. Park Jie-won (5th term) of the Democratic Party of Korea, a member of the Legislation and Judiciary Committee of the National Assembly, out of 1,405,185 criminal suspects in 2024, 635,088 people, or 45.2%, had prior criminal records.

When analyzing the proportion of ex-convicts among suspects by crime type, stalking crimes showed the highest proportion at 53.6%.

Among drug crime suspects, the proportion of ex-convicts was 48.7%, which was also higher than the average, followed by prostitution (43.2%), child abuse (41.9%), and sexual violence (37.9%).

In particular, for drug crimes, among the 92,431 suspects arrested between 2022 and 2025, 30,401 people had a history of being previously booked for the same crime, or 32.9%.

This figure is significantly higher than the recidivism rate for child abuse (11.5%), prostitution (10.0%), and sexual violence (6.5%) during the same period.

Rep. Park said, "Since stalking and drug suspects often have criminal records than other crimes, we must look into risk factors that may lead to stalking and drug crimes at the correction and probation stage in advance, and if necessary, preventive education and counseling must be strengthened."