Temporal and spatial analysis of crime in Seoul, Korea

Environmental criminology is a field that is growing and evolving in western societies. However, there are few works by either western criminologists or eastern scholars on crime patterns in oriental countries, including Korea. Inspired by this deficiency, crime data from Seoul, Korea was analyzed to confirm whether the established theories and findings of environmental criminology in western countries hold for Korea as well. The results of these analyses verified that there are stable temporal and spatiai patterns in crime that exist in Seoul. For the purpose of examining more comprehensive crime patterns, synthetic temporal-spatial analysis was employed. Temporal and spatial analysis could be linked by the idea of "dynamic place." Dynamic place means that the sense of place is not static but dynamic; that is, it varies according to the flow of time. The criminality of a place can be alleged for only some specific time period. Through analysis, it was verified that crime hot spots are "hot" only during definite times.