Reports of stalking in Gangwon Province rose from 574 in 2021 to 1,328 in 2025, an increase of about 2.3 times, according to figures from the Gangwon Provincial Police Agency reported by Gangwon Domin Ilbo. Reports of dating violence also increased from 1,348 to 2,591 over the same period, showing that repeated unwanted contact is being recorded alongside a wider rise in violence within intimate relationships.
Recent cases have exposed gaps between formal protection and actual safety. In Gangneung, a former common-law partner accused of stalking killed the victim after police initially decided not to forward the case because the conduct was judged insufficiently continuous or repetitive. Investigators later confirmed that the accused had visited the victim’s home four times. In Chuncheon, a man who violated a 100-metre provisional restraining order by going to a former partner’s workplace and threatening her received a four-year-and-six-month prison sentence.
The reported cases also show that legal measures can fail when repeated conduct is not identified or enforced quickly. Another man returned to the same victim’s business less than a month after receiving a stalking fine and sent 28 calls and text messages; he was sentenced to 10 months in prison, suspended for two years. These outcomes do not establish that every protection order will fail, but they demonstrate why repeated visits, threats and digital contact require prompt risk assessment.
The Ministry of Justice is pursuing amendments that would add nine forms of conduct to the stalking category, including coercion within a relationship, location tracking without consent and digital control. Experts cited by the newspaper are calling for clearer standards to distinguish ordinary disputes from stalking, criteria for identifying high-risk offenders, faster risk reviews and stronger field responses. The central policy task is to connect those standards to timely intervention before repeated contact escalates into violence.