On August 16th, during a meeting of high prosecutors, the Supreme Public Prosecutor’s Office (SPO) announced that they would take stern action against increasing narcotic and organized crimes. During the first half of this year, the total number of drug offenders was 8,575, a 13.4% increase compared to a year ago. The prosecution said that organized crime has expanded into the territory of narcotic crimes. However, the number of punished organized criminals was 676 last year, a 70.5% decrease from 2017. The prosecution pointed out that direct drug investigation has been reduced after restructuring the investigative power of the police. This caused a contradiction between increasing cases of organized crime and a decreasing number of punished criminals. Therefore, they revised the Regulations on the Scope of Crime for Beginning of Prosecutor’s Investigation to define narcotic crimes as economic crimes, which are the subject of the prosecution’s immediate investigation, and decided to investigate narcotic crimes directly. The SPO announced they would construct a worldwide database for major drug routes until next year. Currently, the prosecution is strengthening the international cooperation system with about 30 countries and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). A prosecution official said, “We will do our best to protect the community from crime and renovate Korea as a country without drugs.”